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I shouted reassurances to Frosty, who was looking apprehensively back at us. But it was a facer. I had never once suspected them of such a thing. "Well," I greeted, when we overtook them and could talk comfortably; "this is luck. When we get across to Pochette's you can get in with us, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, and add the desired touch of propriety to our wedding."
I told him I'd be right with them at the finish, and he needn't to worry any about me. Pretty soon I'll show you how well I kept my word. We rode and rode, and handed out our experiences to each other, and got to Pochette's that night. I couldn't help remembering the last time I'd been over that trail, and how rocky I felt about things.
Frosty said he wasn't worried about that walk of his into Pochette's growing dim in his memory, either. Well, then, we got to Pochette's I think I have remarked the fact. And at Pochette's, just unharnessing his team, limped my friend of White Divide, old King. Funny how a man's view-point will change when there's a girl cached somewhere in the background.
At Pochette's you sit down to a long table covered with dark-red mottled oilcloth and sprinkled with things to eat, and watch that your elbow doesn't cause your nearest neighbor to do the sword-swallowing act involuntarily and disastrously with his knife, or you don't eat.
When we stopped at Pochette's door the girls ran up and tangled their arms around each other and wasted enough kisses to make Frosty and me swear. And they whispered things, and then laughed about it, and whispered some more, and all we could hear was a gurgle of "You dear!" and the like of that. Frosty and I didn't do much; we just looked at each other and grinned.
An hour after sunrise I slipped off Spikes and watched them lead him away to the stable; he staggered like a man when he has drunk too long and deeply. I swallowed a cup of coffee, mounted a little buckskin, and went on, with Pochette's assurance, "Don't be afraid to put heem through," ringing in my ears. I was not afraid to put him through.
Our lazy land smiling and dreaming to itself had disappeared; in its stead, the wind howled down the river from the west and lashed the water into what would have looked respectable waves to one who had not been on the ocean and seen the real thing. The new grass lay flat upon the prairies, and chunks of dirt rattled down from the roof of Pochette's primitive abiding-place.
The darkness flowed down over the land and hid the farther hills; the sky-line crept closer until White Divide seemed the boundary of the world, and all beyond its tumbled shade was untried mystery. Frosty, a shadowy figure rising and falling regularly beside me, turned his face and spoke again: "We ought to make Pochette's Crossing by daylight, or a little after with luck," he said.
"If he was the Yellow Peril, instead of one of your much-vaunted steeds," I remarked tartly, "I could go at him with a wrench and have him in working order again in five minutes; as it is " I felt that the sentence was stronger uncompleted. "As it is," finished Frosty calmly, "you'll just step up on Spikes and go on to Pochette's.
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