A hundred yards apart brother and sister sat on the ground and watched their horses and the burro, the latter with his shaggy head down and playfully kicking to right and left, racing off toward home without them.
“Le’s walk!” shouted Mart. “Darn that burro! There goes my fryin’ pan!”
The girl brushed the sand from her hair and ears and eyebrows.
“All right!” she sputtered. “And there goes your bacon, too! And that last looked like a loaf of bread. As I was saying,” she continued serenely when he came up to her, “you know nothing whatever about railroad-construction camps. Neither do I, and I’m content in my ignorance. I know just what pa means to do. He’ll invite Mr. Mangan and any of the rest of the bosses that he thinks are big bugs to the house; and he’ll do everything in his power to make me interested in one of them—Mangan, of course, since he’s supposed to be the wealthiest of all of them. Oh, he makes me sick! Say—wait a minute; my boot’s full of sand.”
She sat down, removed her elaborately stitched tampico-top riding boot, shook the sand from it, and dusted her stocking. Mart waited, chewing absently on a spear of squawtooth. Mart had been told by the Indians that to chew squawtooth was good for kidney trouble. Mart did not know that he had kidney trouble, and he did not like the bitter taste of squawtooth. But considering that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, he chewed it all day long when riding the desert and mountains after cows.
“There! That feels better.”
Manzanita had slipped her boot on again and removed her silver spurs. Side by side they plodded on through the clinging sand.
“Darn them caballos!” muttered Mart.
“You should say, ‘Darn those caballos,’ brother mine.”
“‘Darn those caballos,’” seriously repeated Mart, chewing his squawtooth and stooping to recover his frying pan.