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They could not carry all their household goods on their shoulders, nor pack them on a burro's back, and to freight them over a hundred miles of mountain trails cost more than the purchase of new goods in the new town. So they departed with only such necessities as they could carry, and abandoned the rest to pack rats and chance wanderers such as I.
This brought the clerk out into the night; and there in the light streaming from the tent door lay the figure of a man crosswise and face down on a burro's back. "Ye see, I know Hank some time," explained Basil Filer simply. "And jest last night a friend o' mine he camped with me, and said Hank was up to his old devilment ag'in.
When we came to the one where sounds had answered my knocking, I paused before the door, hesitating to intrude. That first creepy feeling stole over me. I put my hand on the burro's neck. I jerked the latchstring and pushed open the door. The room was dark and silent. When I struck a match, there was a rapid scurrying of rats, darting for shelter. My burly bodyguard never once left my side.
The well-thrown pebble struck that part of the burro's anatomy at which it was aimed; the dog barked; and Croesus with an indignant jerk of his head, and a flirt of his tail started forward. At the fork of the trail, he paused. The two men waited with breathless interest.
Just arrived!" called Naab cheerily, yet deep-voiced with the happiness he knew the tidings would give. "A dusty, dirty, shaggy, starved, lop-eared, lazy burro Noddle!" Mescal flew out into the lane, and with a strange broken cry of joy that was half a sob she fell upon her knees and clasped the little burro's neck.
I'll stop here myself and watch her," declared Polly with finality, as she assumed the post vacated by her father, and held the little burro's fuzzy head upon her knees. Sam Brewster smiled as he watched Polly bend over her pet and whisper affectionately in the long, sensitive ear.
No red stains which might be blood. Nothing.... No. In a patch of soft earth between two stones there was a hoofprint. It was not a footprint. A hoof had made it, but not a horse's hoof, nor a burro's. It wasn't a mountain sheep track. It was not the track of any animal known on earth. But it was here.
His folded coat was found under the horse's head. His body, lashed on a burro's back, was brought over the mountains by his friends that night into Lincoln, twenty miles distant. Fifty men took up the McSween fight that night; for, in truth, the killing of Tunstall was murder and without justification. That was the beginning of the actual Lincoln County War.
The burro's pack displayed crowbars and shovels and picks and gold pans and camp equipage; and to Charley's mind the little procession looked very business-like. After following the dusty road through a flat brown plain, in about a mile and a half they passed what Mr. Grigsby said was the famous Sutter's Fort.
Like many of the old pagan priests, Balaam was doubtless an adept in the art of ventriloquism. That may have convinced the ambassadors and bulled the price of curses; for then, as now, it was no uncommon thing for the utterance of an ass to be mistaken for that of an oracle. Or some Doubting Thomas may have twisted the burro's tail.
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