“Nor you either,” Walker retorted laughing. “You’re too little. Hey, you,” he broke off his conversation with Alice quickly and called to Nan, “don’t do that.”
“What?” Nan asked innocently.
“You know. Don’t look so innocent.”
“Nan Sherwood!” Bess guessed at what Walker was driving at. “You’re not taking pictures of us in these outfits are you?”
“She not only is, but she has,” Walker answered before Nan could say anything. “I saw her sliding that little camera back into its case.”
“Nan, please,” Alice joined in the protest, “have mercy on us and think how our children and grandchildren will laugh if they ever see pictures of us riding mule-back. We’re all perfect sights.”
But Nan had already taken the pictures, so the protests came too late. Now it was Adair MacKenzie who diverted their attention. “Get along there. Get a move on, you slow poke.” Adair was kicking the sides of his mule with real force. But the mule was accustomed to such treatment and he only raised his ears lazily, turned his head slowly and looked at his rider sleepily. Then he stopped, dead in his tracks.
“Get along there, get along, I say,” Adair kicked the mule again. “Can’t you understand plain English?”
“Understands only Spanish, I guess, Mr. MacKenzie,” Walker said. “Try that on him.”
“If he can’t understand English, the best language in the world, he can’t understand anything,” Adair was as stubborn as the mule he was on, but for once all his railing, all his sputtering, all the ordering that he could do, didn’t accomplish a thing. The mule just wouldn’t move.