"Then you'll ride," said Davies. "Come on, Charley. We'll get a saddle
on each of the nags."

Along the road through the tropic jungle, Miss Drexel and Juanita,
her Indian maid, led the way. Her brother, carrying the three rifles,
brought up the rear, while in the middle Davies and Wemple struggled
with Mrs. Morgan and the two decrepit steeds. One, a flea-bitten roan,
groaned continually from the moment Mrs. Morgan's burden was put upon
him till she was shifted to the other horse. And this other, a mangy
sorrel, invariably lay down at the end of a quarter of a mile of Mrs.
Morgan.

Miss Drexel laughed and joked and encouraged; and Wemple, in brutal
fashion, compelled Mrs. Morgan to walk every third quarter of a mile.
At the end of an hour the sorrel refused positively to get up, and, so,
was abandoned. Thereafter, Mrs. Morgan rode the roan alternate quarters
of miles, and between times walked--if _walk_ may describe her
stumbling progress on two preposterously tiny feet with a man supporting
her on either side.

A mile from the river, the road became more civilized, running along the
side of a thousand acres of banana plantation.

"Parslow's," young Drexel said. "He'll lose a year's crop now on account
of this mix-up."

"Oh, look what I've found!" Miss Drexel called from the lead.

"First machine that ever tackled this road," was young Drexel's
judgment, as they halted to stare at the tire-tracks.