“What do you think it hides?” he asked in a husky whisper.
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, but I have de bad feelin’.”
“I forgot to sleep with my feet crossed last night,” said Meeteetse, “and I dreamed horrible dreams all night long. Maybe they was warnin’s. I can’t think of anything much that could happen to us though,” he went on, having forgotten some of his ill-nature in his alarm for his personal safety. “These here horses ain’t goin’ to run away—I wisht they would, fer ’t would git us quite a piece on our road. We ain’t no enemies worth mentionin’, and we ain’t worth stealin’, so I don’t hardly think your feelin’ means any wrong for us. More’n likely it’s jest somebody dead.”
This thought, slightly consoling to Meeteetse, did not seem to comfort the Indian woman, who continued to squirm on the rickety seat and to strain her eyes into the darkness.
“If anybody ud come along and want to mix with me—say, do you see that fist? If ever I hit anybody with that fist, they’ll have to have it dug out of ’em. I don’t row often, but when I does—oh, lordy! lordy! I jest raves and caves. I was home on a visit onct, and my old-maid aunt gits a notion of pickin’ on me. Say, I ups and runs her all over the house with an axe! I’m more er less a dang’rous character when I’m on the peck. Is that feelin’ workin off of you any?” he inquired anxiously.
“It comes stronger,” she answered, and her grip tightened on the flour-sack she held under her blanket.
“I wisht I knowed what it was. I’m gittin’ all strung up myself.” His popping eyes ached from trying to see into the darkness around them. “If we kin git past them gulches onct! That ud be a dum bad place to roll off the side. We’d go kerplunk into the crick-bottom. Gosh! what was that?” He stopped the weary horses with a terrific jerk.
It was only a little night prowler which had scurried under the horses’ feet and rustled into the brush.
“You see how on aidge I am! I’ll tell you,” he went on garrulously—the sound of his own voice was always pleasant to Meeteetse: “I take more stock in signs and feelin’s than most people, for I’ve seen ’em work out. Down there in Hermosy there was a feller made a stake out’n a silver prospect, and he takes it into his head to go back to Nebrasky and hunt up his wife, that he’d run off and left some time prev’ous. As the date gits clost for him to leave, he got glummer and glummer. He’d skerce crack a smile. The night before the stage was comin’ to git him, he was settin’ in a ’dobe with a dirt roof, rared back on the hind legs of his chair, with his hands in his pockets.