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"Yes, dear; and I also have 'so much to tell, and so much to hear," assented Rothsay, as they sat down at the foot of the young pine tree, with their backs to the rising cliffs and their faces to the descending mountain, the brook at its foot, and the vast, sunlit prairie, in its autumn coat of dry grass, rolling in smooth hills and hollows of gold and bronze off to the distant horizon.
"By God, then we're on the right trail now. It's the buckboard ahead. We must get it. That's the cargo, sure as fate. Come on!" A light buckboard was moving leisurely over the open prairie.
The alliance entered into, we left them to complete their arrangements, while we pushed our own to all convenient speed. The emigrants for whom our friends professed such contempt were encamped on the prairie about eight or ten miles distant, to the number of a thousand or more, and new parties were constantly passing out from Independence to join them.
I could now entertain no doubt that I had hit upon the way out of this terrible prairie. It struck me as being rather singular that two travellers should have met in this immense plain, which so few persons traversed; but that they had done so was certain, for there was the track of the two horses as plain as possible.
One might go further and say that somebody was quite willing to strain a point, even, in order to get her there in time for the next train. The Happy Family was gathered in Rusty Brown's place, watching Irish do things to a sheep-man from Lonesome Prairie, in a game of pool. They were just giving vent to a prolonged whoop of derision at the sheep-man's play, when a rig flashed by the window.
It was not unlike a terrier with the bay of a bloodhound. The phenomenon was not lost upon Fyles. He was studying this meager specimen of a prairie "crook." He had never before met one quite like him. He felt that here was a case of brain rather than physical outlawry. It might be harder to deal with than the savage, illiterate toughs he was used to.
The redskins did not follow us away from the creek. As soon as we were on open ground we stopped and built a fire and dried our clothing, for we were as wet as drowned rats. To build a fire we had to pull small sagebrush that grew here and there in the open prairie in that country.
P'r'aps he didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of the thing that mattered most to him that his life was over, an' that a man had put a bullet in him, an' "
Tired horses, a missed train connection, some unforeseen delay, and they arrived an hour, half an hour, perhaps only a few minutes after the registration had closed. Too late! Oddly enough, one of the last to register was the foreman of the U Cross Ranch, who came galloping across the prairie at the last moment to make his application for a homestead.
During the discussion, numbers had continued to come in, until there were over a hundred gathered together. The moon was shining from a clear sky overhead, and the group gathered on the open prairie, where the members thereof were in readiness to dash in any direction, in case of an attack. With the words of Lone Wolf came the adjournment of the convention.
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