Even Lem Hunt looked back once or twice, as they left the city limits, and waved a warning hand toward “T. Sorrel,” who merely tossed his red head and continued to draw upon the reins he should have loosened. Also, Silent Pete opened his lips for once and hallooed to the man ahead:
“Let ’em out, you fool! Give ’em their heads, I say!”
Then he relapsed into his normal condition, attending strictly to his own business and making himself deaf to the timid shrieks of Miss Milliken, from the rear seat. He was known to “hate silly women” and felt his fate a hard one in having to escort such a one as the governess. She, accustomed only to the sedate pace of the fat Montaigne steeds, felt that the spirited animals before that wagon were simply on the road to destruction and nowhere short of it! She clung to her seat-arm with one hand and clutched Pete’s coat collar with the other, frantically beseeching him:
“Do stop! Oh! you—man—just stop—and let me get my breath! I—I bump so—I—I can’t even think!”
But this western jehu merely flicked her fingers off as he would a troublesome fly, while Monty coolly advised:
“Don’t try, Miss Milliken. Fast? Why, they call this mere walkin’ out here. I’m going to take a nap.”
He settled himself sidewise on his seat, folded his arms upon its back, dropped his face upon them and tried to sleep. He was cross. He had wanted to ride in the foremost vehicle with the fine four-in-hand. He hated being put at the tail end of the procession with stupid Alfaretta Babcock, a speechless man, and a nervous, half-hysterical woman for companions. But the chuckle that escaped him a moment later proved that his slumber was only a pretended one. At a particularly rough spot in the road and a particularly shrill scream from Miss Milliken, the angry ranchman faced about and rudely ordered: “Shut up!” Then his lips closed with a click and nothing further escaped them during all that drive.
Alfaretta giggled; then strained her eyes again to pierce the distance which she had been studying for some time. Then she laid a hand on Monty’s head and shook it vigorously: