"Hi tunket! isn't she a plucky girl?" Marty told himself. "I'm just proud to be her cousin, so I am! We'll have some time down there among the greasers, believe me!"
Marty owned a shotgun and he was tempted to take it along. But he thought better of that. He could not very well hide it while traveling on the train.
"B'sides I reckon rifles, or these here automatics, are more fashionable down there on the Border," the boy ruminated.
Bedtime came and he, like Janice, was too excited to sleep. He was afraid he might sleep, however, and, knowing his failing, he determined to arrange matters so that he could not possibly miss the boat in the morning.
Putting a pair of clean socks and an extra handkerchief in one jacket pocket, and a clean collar in another (for Marty believed in traveling light), he climbed out over the shed roof before midnight and carefully descended to the ground by the grape arbor route. Making his way to the wharf he curled up on some bags in front of the freight-house door. Nobody could unlock and open that door without disturbing him; but the chill morning air awoke him in plenty of season.
When the steamboat bumped into the dock Marty was right at hand to catch the bow hawser. It was still dark and he slipped aboard without being noticed.
The Constance Colfax boasted no staterooms; but the few all-night passengers from up the lake were sprawled about the unventilated cabin in a somnolent state. Marty only peeped in at them, and then ensconced himself on deck where he could watch the gangplank.
He saw his cousin in her heavy veil come aboard. She, too, preferred to remain on deck, cold as it was, to going into the stuffy cabin. Janice was warmly dressed and the morning was clear. When the Constance Colfax got under way again she watched the few twinkling lights of Polktown and the stars overhead fade out as the sky grew rosy above the mountain tops.
The boat was well out of the cove when the sun came up. A brisk wind whipped up the whitecaps. Sheltered in the lee of the little deckhouse, Janice was left to herself and to her thoughts save when the purser came around for her fare.
"Didn't take on no crowd at Polktown, Miss," he observed genially. "Only you and three more."