The woman pointed to the packages with a little dramatic gesture. "Oh, yes," she said. "I'm ready, though I'll have to leave most two hundred dollars' worth of clothes behind me. I've no use for taking in plain sewing while you think over what you've brought me to in the penitentiary."
Slocum smiled drily. "If you hadn't wanted quite so many dry goods, I'm not sure it would have come to this, but we needn't worry about that just now. Tom will have the horses round in 'bout five minutes. You don't figure on taking all that truck along with you?"
"I do," said the woman. "I've got to have something to put on when we get to Oregon!"
"Well," said Slocum, grimly, "I'll be quite glad to get out with a whole hide, and I guess it couldn't be done if we started with a packhorse train or a wagon. I hadn't quite fixed to light out until I got the message that Devine, who didn't seem quite pleased with the last accounts, was coming in."
"Could you have stood the boys off?"
"I might have done," said Slocum, reflectively. "Still, I couldn't stand off Devine. It's dollars he's coming for, and I've got 'bout half the accounts call for here."
"You're going to leave him them?"
Slocum laughed. "No," he said. "I guess they'll come in handy in Oregon. I'm going to leave him the boys to reckon with. They'll be here with clubs soon after the cars come in, and we'll be a league away down the trail by then."
A patter of horse hoofs outside cut short the colloquy, though there was a brief altercation when the woman once more insisted on taking all the packages with her. Slocum terminated it by bundling her out of the door, and, when she tearfully consented to mount a kicking pony, swung himself to the saddle. Still, for several minutes his heart was in his mouth, as he picked his way through the blacker shadows on the skirt of the beaten trail, until a man rose suddenly out of them.
"Hallo!" he said. "Where're you going?"