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Don't see nothin' t' do, except t' make you th' messenger." Whitey was delighted. "Where is the T Up and Down?" he asked. "'Bout a hunderd an' fifteen miles no'thwest o' here, t'other side o' Zumbro Creek," Bill answered. "Good!" cried Whitey. "I'll take Injun, and " "Wouldn't do that," Bill objected. "Dan hates Injuns, an' he'd sure be rambunctious 'bout this one."
"If you keep goin' good an' lively th' rest o' th' day, you c'n hit th' Zumbro before dark, an' just one mile this side o' th' Zumbro is Cal Smith's ranch. He'll take care o' you overnight, an' you c'n go t' th' T Up and Down in th' mornin'." "B but I didn't know I had to walk," Whitey protested. "Reck'n you do, unless you c'n ketch a jack-rabbit an' ride him," the driver answered.
When they reached Zumbro Creek it hadn't gone down a bit, except to go down stream, and it was doing that like the dickens. It certainly was a very bad-tempered-looking creek, but Cal Smith wasn't afraid of it.
But the little range ponies were just as game as Cal Smith, and they kept fighting that stream as though they were humans, and kept edging over and edging over until they finally got a footing and scrambled out on the other bank, a full quarter of a mile below the ford. So Zumbro Creek had beat them a whole half-mile down stream, on that trip across. "So long, son," said Cal Smith.
"This'll take you out of your way a bit," Dan went on, "but you won't have t' cross th' Zumbro, an' I'll send back that hoss you borrowed from Cal Smith, by one o' the hands. An' I'll lend you one o' my nags t' take you as far as Willer Bend, where you c'n get another mount. Little Thompson'll go that far with you, an' from there on th' goin's straight."
And the harder the trail was, the harder became Whitey's opinion of Bill Jordan and his jokes. Darkness comes late in that northern country, and it was dusk when Whitey had another unpleasant surprise, for he came to the Zumbro, and a sight met his eyes that would have made almost any grown-up stand back and look a lot.
She wasn't a creek, she was a river; no, she wasn't a river, she was a rearing, roaring, raging torrent, owing to the rains and floods that had filled the banks to overflowing. And this wasn't the worst of it. Where was Cal Smith's ranch, a mile this side of the Zumbro? The driver had told him about that, so it couldn't have been another of Bill Jordan's jokes.
Who but an iconoclast would rend the sensitive ear with such barbarities as the Loss Angglees of to-day for the deep-vowelled Los Angeles of the last century? Who but a Yankee would swap the murky "Purgatoire" for Picketwire, and make Zumbro River of the Rivière des Ombres of brave old Père Marquette? And so, too, it goes through all the broad Northwest.
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