“And it would be the same with him. If you’re afraid you can’t shoot straight, I’ll take one gun and Bill the other, and you can crawl under the seats.”
“Who’s talking about crawling under the seats—what’s that?”
A peal of thunder rumbled overhead, and it was already beginning to grow dark. The afternoon was merging into night, which, as has been explained, was closing in sooner than usual, because of the cloudy sky.
“We’re going to catch it afore we get home,” remarked the driver, glancing upward and twitching the lines, so as to force the team into a moderate trot.
“Why don’t you hurry up your nags more, and get home sooner?” asked Wagstaff.
“A good master is marciful to his beast; I aint likely to gain anything by hurrying, for the storm may come and be over afore we get to town, while the animals are so used to this work, that, if I made it a rule to push ’em now and then, they are likely to break down, and trade aint good enough for me to afford that.”
“But if you should do it once, it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Another thing,” added the driver, as if the fact was a clincher to the discussion, “if we should go rattling through Black Bear Swamp ahead of time, that suspicious chap would miss us.”
“Well?”
“And we would miss him, which we don’t want to do. Being as you’ve got your guns and are so anxious to use ’em on him, why I won’t be mean enough to rob you of the chance.”