“MILES,—that's a funny name. I reckon that's why you war so FAR OFF and DISTANT at first.”
Mr. Hemmingway thought this very witty, and said so. “But,” he added, “when I was a little nearer a moment ago, you stopped me.”
“But you was moving faster than the shanty was. I reckon you don't take that gait with your lady friends at Sacramento! However, you kin talk now.”
“But you forget I don't know 'where we are,' nor 'what's going to happen.'”
“But I do,” she said quietly. “In a couple of hours we'll be picked up, so you'll be free again.”
Something in the confidence of her manner made him go to the door again and look out. There was scarcely any current now, and the cabin seemed motionless. Even the wind, which might have acted upon it, was wanting. They were apparently in the same position as before, but his sounding-line showed that the water was slightly falling. He came back and imparted the fact with a certain confidence born of her previous praise of his knowledge. To his surprise she only laughed and said lazily, “We'll be all right, and you'll be free, in about two hours.”
“I see no sign of it,” he said, looking through the door again.
“That's because you're looking in the water and the sky and the mud for it,” she said, with a laugh. “I reckon you've been trained to watch them things a heap better than to study the folks about here.”
“I daresay you're right,” said Hemmingway cheerfully, “but I don't clearly see what the folks about here have to do with our situation just now.”
“You'll see,” she said, with a smile of mischievous mystery. “All the same,” she added, with a sudden and dangerous softness in her eyes, “I ain't sayin' that YOU ain't kinder right neither.”