"Do I pay you before you start or after you finish?" There was more than a trace of sarcasm in the question.
Joe said grimly, "After I finish. But I also want a clean place to camp and feed for my stock."
Jake Favors said, "You've made yourself a deal. Drive into the meadow behind the corrals and make camp. There's a good spring rising under the apple trees, and it's far enough from the corrals so you won't get much smell."
Joe swung his team off the road and onto the dusty, dry ground adjoining the corrals. A little way farther on the wagon wheels ground clean grass, and Emma looked nervously back at the city. Independence had its allure, but she had her children to think of and who knew what evil lurked in a place like this? She asked,
"How long do you think it will take you, Joe?"
"I'm going to try to make it in three weeks, but it might take longer."
"Isn't that cutting our time very short?"
"I doubt it. I figure that we can make thirty miles a day. We'll be in Laramie well before the fall storms hit and we certainly need the money."
Emma moved uneasily and murmured, "Yes, we need it."
Because it was secluded and out of the city, she was less nervous when Joe swung the team into the grove of apple trees. There were eight of them that had had no attention, and as a consequence they bore knotty little apples that clung tightly to the branches with a few ripened ones on the ground. But the place was clean, and the spring that rose in the center of the trees and trickled itself into a reed-bordered rill, was cold.