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The horses had jerked the doubletree loose, and the last he had seen of their marks they had turned up the Bald Hill road and were probably going yet.
Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not daring to wonder. Her father called to her fretfully, and she went in to him again and told him what Sorry had said about the cracked doubletree, and persuaded him to let her bring his supper at once, and to have the fruit later when Frank arrived. Brit did not say much, but she sensed his uneasiness, and her own increased in proportion.
You're needin' somethin' fixed, I see," and he nodded quietly towards a road-side job of mending at the doubletree, which was roughly wrapped about with rope. "Yes. Good-morning," said the driver of the rig, a clear-eyed, wholesome-looking man of clerical appearance. "We had a little accident. We've come from Bullionville. How long do you think it will take you to put us in shape?"
A pair of wondering, patient, driverless horses watched the departure, but they did not move from the spot where they had been checked by the first attack. Across the doubletree behind them hung the limp form of their driver, a great, gaping wound in his head. He had driven them for the last time, and they seemed to know that his cold lips could never again command them to "go on."
Nothing," she added desperately, "could happen to Frank between here and the turn-off at the ford, could it? Lone saw him turn into our trail over an hour ago, he said." Sorry, his fingers thrust into his overalls pockets, his thumbs hooked over the waistband, spat into the sand beside the path. "Well, he started off with a cracked doubletree," he said slowly.
Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not daring to wonder. Her father called to her fretfully, and she went in to him again and told him what Sorry had said about the cracked doubletree, and persuaded him to let her bring his supper at once, and to have the fruit later when Frank arrived. Brit did not say much, but she sensed his uneasiness, and her own increased in proportion.
I run to the window and emit the word or exclamation, which-ever it may be viz, 'Whoa! Then I rush down-stairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dang them mules, I says; 'they done run away and busted the doubletree and two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.
This was a fine, gentle mule. I called her Friendship. When the other animals grew weak I fastened the doubletree to the axle, and thus Friendship alone hauled the wagon fully three hundred miles. At the Cimmaron Springs we met a company of traders from St. Louis, with a train of thirty-eight wagons. One of their wagons was loaded with pitch-pine wood for cooking purposes.
Every homesteader who had a tug that would fasten over a doubletree, a wagon that could still squeak, or a flivver that had a bolt in it, went into the transportation business hauling the seekers from Pierre or from McClure to look at the land. A generation before people had migrated in little groups in covered wagons to find new land.
Some one had exuberantly fired the Whipple shack, and the pintos wanted to whirl short around in their tracks when they saw the smoking embers. They had wanted to bolt straight out across the rocky upland and splinter the doubletree, and perhaps smash a wheel or two, and then stand and kick gleefully at the wreck.
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