"Quite so, I am not here to trade. Oh, dear, no! I am just jogging along."
"But whither? I do not want to be rude; but where there are no roads, I should imagine one's route led nowhere."
"The proof that your inquiry is not impertinent is shown in my freely answering you. My course is public property. On the border, everyone knows that my mates and I are going to the gold fields."
"Oh, after gold," repeated the other with well-feigned surprise. "Over the range into California? In that case, if there's any reliance in maps—though when maps are made by geographers at a desk ten thousand miles off, I have not too much faith in maps myself—well, you are askew! Granting you the finding of a pass in the Rockies, you will be three weeks reaching the eastern slope of the Nevada Range, and if you go that way and can climb the Oregonian Heights, you will be three months getting down to Portland. Either way, you will have so heavy and fatiguing a 'jog,' that I wonder very much that you take a delicate young lady with you."
"What you say may be very true, sir; but, to begin with, do not run away with the wrong notion. This young lady would not be in my company—I may better say, one of my company—if it were not absolutely her wish and will."
"Oh, now I curl back into my shell," said the Englishman, with a sardonic smile, "I cannot say I am amazed at the fair young lady's determination. Your American girls have already a name in Europe for daring, devotion, constancy, and—caprices."
"I beg your pardon, sir," broke in the young lady, looking at him fixedly, "for intervening in your conversation unbesought, but you should be fully informed on one point, Mr. Dearborn—I believe you are so named—"
"Ranald Dearborn, at your service."
"Well, Mr. Ranald Dearborn, I do not deserve your eulogy in any measure. Captain Kidd lies, and very well knows that he lies, when he asserts that I wish to accompany him in his journey. I am here, in his company—as he puts it—in spite of myself, against my will, because I have been shamefully torn from all the semblance of home that I had, and dragged thence I know not whither. I am no relative of his, not his ward, but his slave!"
"Señorita!" began the captain violently, on recovering his tongue.