"Breaking ahead like that. I'll set the pace for this trip."
"You don't seem to be in any hurry," retorted Holmes, nettled by the surveyor's tone.
"I ain't. Not in that kind of a hurry."
"But look here, Abe. Don't you know that Mr. Worth expects us to make the trip in the shortest possible time? We've got to get that money into Republic to-morrow evening, and before if we can. There is too much at stake to poke along like this."
Abe reflected. The Company man certainly understood the situation. Aloud he said: "I think I know what Jefferson Worth wants, Mr. Holmes, and I reckon you'll have to trust me to carry out his wishes. I know the distance; I know this road; and I know horse flesh a little. At the rate you're trying to go you'll be afoot before noon to-morrow. You can ride your own horse down if you want to, but you can't hinder me by fretting mine into unnecessary exertion. He'll need every ounce of his strength and I'm going to see that he doesn't waste any of it. Either push ahead out of sight and hearing as fast as you please, or turn back; but if you ride with me you'll quit this monkey business and ride quietly at the gait I set."
Willard Holmes instantly saw the force of the western man's words. "I beg your pardon, Lee," he said. "Of course you know best. I'm so anxious over this business that I'm acting like a fool."
After that companionship was a little easier, but under the circumstances the one topic most on the mind of each was carefully avoided. At midnight they stopped at the crossing of a stream to water and feed, and Abe showed his companion how to make a nosebag out of the sack in which his grain was carried.
Daybreak found them in the foothills. At the ranch where Abe had been accommodated the morning before they again halted for breakfast. With another feed for the horses tied behind their saddles, they began the long climb of the western slope of the mountains and about four o'clock in the afternoon had crossed over the summit and reached the spring at the head of Devil's Canyon—the last water they would find until they reached Wolf Wells in the desert.
When they dismounted at the watering place some two hundred yards off the trail, the surveyor, after slipping the bit from his horse's mouth and loosening the saddle girth, moved slowly about the little glen, his eyes on the ground. Holmes, standing by the horses which had their muzzles deep in the cool water, watched his companion wearily. "Lost something?" he asked, as Abe continued moving cautiously about.
"Not yet," came the laconic reply.