“And the horse?”
“He calk’lates,” said Fletcher, “to mount his wife—the peaked one—on the horse and take her along till one or other of ’em drops.”
“Take your wife on that horse?” exclaimed Moreau. “Why, it can’t go two miles.”
“Well, maybe it can’t,” returned the man with an immovable face.
There was a pause. Moreau was conscious that the woman was standing behind him in the doorway. He could hear her breathing.
“Come on, Lucy,” said the husband. “We got to move on sometime.”
Here the second wife spoke up:
“I don’t see how the horse is goin’ to get Lucy twelve miles, and this man says the first place we can stop is twelve miles farther along.”
“Don’t you begin with your everlasting objections,” said the husband, furiously. “Get the horse.”
The woman evidently knew the time had passed for trifling and turned away toward the brush shed. Fletcher followed her with a grin. The situation appealed to his sense of humor, and he was curious as to the outcome.