“So say we all of us, Billie,” Adrian assured him; “that would make things easy for our plans, you know.”
“Ain’t I glad I brought my reliable Marlin along,” sighed Billie. “It got me that ferocious old grizzly down in that spur of the Rockies, you remember; and every time it’s done the business. All I have to do is to aim straight, and pull the trigger, and it does the rest. And whenever I think of them rustlers getting away with the pick of Adrian’s herds it kinder riles me, so that I feel as if I’d like to do something terrible—pink one of the same in
the leg, mebbe, and make him sorry he ever embarked in such a measly game.”
“Less mumbling, Billie; it won’t do to talk after this, unless you’ve got something worth while to say.”
“Huh!” grunted Billie, sorely perplexed as to what Donald might mean by these words; but at the same time falling into his wishes; for he feared that if he gave any trouble by being noisy or clumsy, his chums might take a notion to tell him to stand by and watch the ponies, a job Billie had no liking for at all.
At another time he might have taken exception to that remark about his “having something worth while to say,” but just now he must swallow his indignation, and do whatever they told him, if he wanted to be in the hunt.
“How much closer had we better go mounted?” asked Adrian, speaking in a whisper of course.
“I’m hoping to run across a likely spot where we can leave the ponies,” Donald told him; “something that is marked, so we can find it again later on without any trouble. And here it is right now. There’s a tree growing alongside this rock that lies here on the open prairie, you note, Ad.”
“Yes, and seems to me I remember that same rock too; fact is, it was right here that bull knocked my pony over, and wanted to impale me on his horns,” Adrian told him.
They dismounted again, and made the animals secure by using their ropes, which could be readily fastened to the tree; and possibly Donald may have had some such idea in his mind when he persisted in looking for a landmark.