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The trail remained so favorable for a couple of miles further, that it was passed at the same easy, swinging gallop. Vose Adams retained his place a few paces in advance of the others, who saw him glance sharply to the right and left, often to the ground and occasionally to the rear, as if to assure himself that none of his friends was going astray.
After some eight miles of stones, on which I could distinguish no trail, we came to the sand, and at once I could see our former tracks right ahead, which little Satan had followed with the precision of a black-fellow. In repasssing old camping-places on the road, camels will often stop, and look surprised if made to go further.
It was not drying and getting powdery, because the frost was not very keen, and he imagined that Festing meant to get as much lumber as possible down while the surface could be beaten into a smooth track. "You might take Gordon's team and break a trail by hauling the lighter pieces to the top," Festing said.
No longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient fascination. He had become a domestic man. "And I'm glad of it," commented Senor Johnson. The dust eddied aside. Plainly could be seen the swaying wagon, the loose-riding cowboys, the gleaming, naked backs of the herd. Then the veil closed over them again.
In spite of the careful calculation he had made, he soon learned that he had committed an error. Although the tell-tale smoke at first seemed scarcely a mile away, it was more than three times that distance. The way being more obstructed by rocks and the sinuous winding of the trail, he saw the sun sinking low in the west and found that he had still no little traveling to do.
While Mr. Fairbrother's temperature and pulse remain where they now are, no one shall see him and no one shall talk to him save myself and his nurse." I turned with a sick look of disappointment toward the road up which I had so lately come. "Have I panted, sweltered, trembled, for three mortal hours on the worst trail a man ever traversed to go back with nothing for my journey?
His right shoulder, at that." There was a subdued exclamation from Manners, but Pete went on, "Seems he was the uncle of this Bull; took Bull in when Bull was orphaned, because he had to, not because he wanted to, and he raised Bull up to be a sort of general slave around the place. Well, when he comes back home all shot up he tries to get his sons to take my trail, but they didn't have the nerve.
"Why, it's nothing but a paved street!" exclaimed Migwan in disappointment, when they had reached the historical spot. "That's all it is now," answered Mrs. Evans, "but it is built over the old Portage Trail, and some of these old trees undoubtedly shaded the original path."
"He fooled us all, includin' your paw, Bud!" "Well, if we get on his trail, and can connect him with the rustlers, which it won't be hard to do, I'm thinking, he won't play any more tricks," declared the western lad vindictively and with righteous anger. "But if that was a warning shot, and that's what it seems it must have been, we'd better take some precautions ourselves."
"I think I'll give Marquis and Gyp their dessert," he said, and, turning aside, began to gather a handful of the greenest leaves. The instant his eyes were off her, she took the horses by their bridles, swung them about, and with a sharp blow of her riding- crop sent them snorting and clattering down the trail. Kirk wheeled barely in time to see them disappearing. "Here!" he cried, sharply.
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