“Glad to hear any doctor ever could be right,” returned the innkeeper, who had never been ill, and attributed his health to his distrust of physicians. “Fresh air, wholesome food and a clear conscience––them’s to long life what the three R’s are to ’rithmetic. Powerful sorry you can’t pass the night. I’d admire to talk over the political situation with an intelligent man.”
The side glance toward himself with which the Scotchman said this sent Ephraim off into a mighty 148 guffaw, in which presently they all joined; and in the midst of the merriment a stable boy led up the horses, and the Sobrante-bound riders loped away. Yet, just before they were out of hearing, Aleck’s stentorian voice sent after them the warning advice:
“Keep a sharp lookout, by, and your hands on your guns. That spook’s hit the trail again! Watch out!”
Ninian laughed, and “Forty-niner” tried to do so, but the most he could accomplish was a feeble cackle, which, his companion fancied, betrayed his age as nothing heretofore had done. It was a nervous, irritated laugh, and was matched by the altered voice in which its owner presently remarked:
“If I can’t stop this fool business any other way, I’ve a notion to ride round the country and shoot right and left, everybody I see, promiscuous. That’s the sure and certain way to hit the spook, too.”
“Heigho! This grows exciting! Spooks? Mysteries? Mail robberies! What next?”
There was no answer from the sharpshooter, who had gotten his horse into a steady trot and was putting the road behind him in a manner that needed all Ninian’s efforts to match. If Nimrod had been as little used to the trail as his rider was to him the space between the two animals would have widened irretrievably; but he was the better bred of the two, and though he didn’t waste his strength in a first spurt, as Prince did, he fell into a steady, easy gait, that soon told to his advantage.
It was one of the perfect moonlight nights which come in that cloudless region, when one can easily “read fine print,” if so inclined, or see across country 149 almost as well as in the day. The swift motion, the exhilarating air, the sense of freedom from city walls and cramped spaces, started the reporter into singing, and later into the silence of wonder over the astonishing power of his own voice.
“Hurrah! If that’s my warble I never heard it before! It’s a marvelous atmosphere that makes a rag time tune sound like a nightingale’s music. If ‘Forty-niner’ would join it–––Hello! what’s up? What in––the name––of––all things!”