“And the led horse you spoke about?”
Ephraim looked up, surprised, answering, rather crisply:
“At home. Why not? When I heard about Nimrod I wasn’t silly enough to bring another.”
“So if I hadn’t brought him we’d been short a mount?” insisted the reporter, teasingly.
“One of us would had to foot it to the ranch, and that one wouldn’t have been me. Huh! Does me good to hear your nonsense gabble again. I declare it does. When did you get my telegraph?”
“This morning.”
“This––morning! Why, I sent it day before yesterday, no, the day before that. Let me see; to-day’s one, yesterday––the funeral, two––the one––yes, three days ago. John Benton himself gave it into the telegraph man’s hands. Himself.”
They mounted and started toward McLeod’s Inn, Ninian doing very well, considering the impatience of his steed and his own limited experience of the saddle, and the sharpshooter sitting as composedly upon the back of as restless an animal as could readily be found. It was a bay, and pranced and curveted to the extent that Nimrod seemed a door-mouse beside it, and Ninian finally observed:
“That’s an undecided sort of beast you have, yourself. Seems to be as much inclined to go backward as forward.”