“There, there, Mabel, of course I won’t go,” said her father. “I’ll stay home. My hunting days are over, I reckon, but I sure would like a chance to wrassle with a bear or draw a bead on a mule deer or a fine big-horn sheep. Say, if you boys ever get near Pryor’s Gap I’ll feel mortal offended if you don’t stop off and see us.”
“We’ll stop,” promised Jack heartily, and he looked into Mabel’s eyes, whereat she blushed again, and Jack felt his heart strangely beating.
“Masquerading mud-turtles! but that’s a fine view!” suddenly exclaimed Nat, who was looking from a window. “You can see fifty miles, I’ll wager.”
Mabel laughed heartily.
“What a funny expression!” she said. “Where did you get it?”
“Oh, he makes them up as he goes along,” explained Jack, while Nat was in some confusion.
“It must be some tiresome,” observed Mr. Pierce, while his eyes twinkled humorously. “But we sure do have fine views out here. You needn’t be in a hurry to look at ’em. There’s plenty where you’re going. But I meant to ask you boys how do you calculate to travel after you get to Fort Custer? I believe you said you were going there first.”
“We are,” replied Jack, “and from there we have arranged to go in wagons to Sage Creek and across Forty-mile Desert.”
“That’s a good route,” observed Mr. Pierce. “Who was you depending on to tote your stuff across the desert?”
“Why, a man named Isaac Blender,” answered Jack. “I wrote to him on the advice of my father, who heard of him through some Western friends he has.”