“I killed a big buffalo! Biggest one you ever saw!” squealed Left-over. “Shot him all to pieces jest as he was running into us. Didn’t I, Billy?”
“Hooray for Left-over!” cheered Hi. “Well, catch up, boys. We’d better be moving or we’ll never get thar.” And he addressed the other outfit. “Can we do anything more for you?”
“No, thank you, strangers,” said both the woman and the man. “We can make it, now our wagon’s out. And that meat’ll taste powerful good.”
“Goodby, then,” called the Hee-Haws.
“Goodby.” And the woman added. “Don’t forget that corner lot.”
“We won’t.”
The timber lining the course of the various streams had shrunken, and the streams themselves were dwindling ever smaller. It was a barren country, this, wide and sandy and dotted with occasional thumb-like hills called buttes. Across it wound the trail, marked by dust and canvas-topped wagons.
“We must be getting near the mountains, boys,” called Hi. “That last station agent said we were only two hundred miles from Denver.”
“We ought to see them, then, pretty soon, I should think,” remarked Mr. Baxter.