It took some moments before he realised that he was gripping a saddle with stiffening knees and riding forward, and he couldn’t tell why. At last, though, a mist seemed to fade away from his thinking powers, and he knew what it all meant. He was riding, and he had been to sleep.
But why? What for?
The answer to those questions came in due course, and he sighed with weariness.
“Oh dear,” he muttered, “I wonder how far it is now. Nearly as far as before,” he thought, for he couldn’t have been asleep more than a minute.
Then for another minute he was confused upon looking at the soft faint glow of the lanthorn held by Griggs in the trap.
“What nonsense!” he said peevishly. “How muddled my head is. But that’s a light over there. Why!—I say!—Oh!”
His whole feelings changed as he uttered those interjections, and the tones of his voice were as if the words were positive, comparative, and superlative.
“We must be close to the valley,” he thought. “The Indians can’t have come, and father has had a camp-fire kept up as a guide for me, and I’ll be bound to say there’ll be something cooking, because he’ll think of how hungry I shall be.
“There’s a good old dad,” he said to himself, beginning to feel bright and happy now, and as invigorated as if he had partaken of refreshment.
“Well, I am glad, and I am hungry, and I’ll say so too. I don’t care if old Ned sneers when I say I am, and tells me that I’m worse than he is. Oh, hooray! You good old mustang! You’re the best pony that ever lived, and I love you as much as a fellow can love a nag. Just think of you bringing me straight back all through that black gulch—me asleep too! There, old chap,” he continued, patting the little animal’s neck, “I won’t forget your mash. You shall have it before I eat a morsel. I wouldn’t take a hundred pounds for you if any one offered it; but nobody will, and I don’t want it if he did.