“Wake up, boy! Look ahead and see if either wagon is in sight! ’Tisn’t so awful dark yet but I wish—I wish I could get a glimpse of Dolly and Jim. That fool driver might have taken the wrong road where it branched off a ways back.”
Silent Pete heard and guessed this was the truth, but he ventured no reply. His business was to drive his own horses and let the tenderfoot look out for himself. But Monty roused himself enough to assure Alfy:
“He wouldn’t do that! Why, that road is nothing but a trail through the woods. Dark as midnight. Don’t worry.” Then he settled himself to sleep again.
Now the fact was that “T. Sorrel,” as his fellow ranchmen called him, had more conceit than common sense. He had heard that the branch road was a short cut to “Roderick’s,” but not that it was impassable for a team. A man on horseback might pass safely over it, by daylight and with a trustworthy mount. Not otherwise; and though the opening was fairly clear the trail entered a hopeless tangle of underbrush and fallen timber but a short way further on. To go forward then became impossible, and equally so the turning back. The lively blacks resented the scratching of briers and broken branches upon their tender limbs and pranced and fretted wildly. A molly cottontail scurried across the track before them and with a mutual, frenzied impulse they shied and sprang into the air.
The buckboard flew upward, turned turtle, scattered its load in all directions, then settled into a broken heap, while the light traces yielded to the strength of the horses, and they rushed madly forward out of sight.
At that very moment it had been, that Silent Pete and his wagon had passed the entrance of that trail; and even in that dusk his trained eye had noted fresh wheel and hoof prints. But it was not his business to stop and investigate. He had been set to bring his party to “Roderick’s”, not to take care of a tenderfoot who ought to have a nurse, the fool!