“Mr. Rouzee,” at length exclaimed Clara, her eyes flashing angrily, and her cheeks flushing, “your place as guide is yonder, along with Tom Maxwell, and not out here. If I appear rude, you force me to be so.”
“A guide’s place depends greatly upon circumstances, Miss Calhoun; and just now I prefer this position.”
“Then occupy it alone; I will go back to the wagon,” she added, reining in her horse.
“Stay, Miss Clara,” cried Rouzee, his black eyes glittering. “Keep your place, but mark me, the time will come—and soon too—when you will repent these haughty airs, and solicit as a favor, what you now affect to scorn. I tell you that the time is not far distant when you will crouch at my feet—when you will hang around me for a word—a smile; when you will call me master. Do you hear?”
“And I tell you, sir, that when we camp to-night, you will have to answer to the charge of being drunk while upon duty,” haughtily retorted Clara, her eyes flashing. “Will you go, sir, or must I appeal to my father?”
The guide did not reply, but plunging his long, cruel spurs into the flanks of his mustang, he dashed rapidly up alongside of the old borderer, Tom Maxwell, who received him with a cold, half-suspicious start. Evidently there was little love lost between the two men.
Just before sunset, the long line of trees was reached, that bordered upon a small stream, and preparations were immediately begun for encamping, while Dusky Dick and Tom Maxwell galloped off to hunt for “sign.”
The mules and horses were ungeared and turned loose, after being hoppled, and the wagons were formed into a rude sort of corral, one line covering the joints in the other. All was bustle and apparent confusion, although each person knew his duty and busied himself about that alone.
Fires were built, and over them stooped the women, preparing supper for the different messes; while the children brought wood and water, or else rolled and tumbled over each other with merry shouts, in their play, little recking what the morrow might bring forth.
To one of these fires, a little apart from the remainder, we now turn. Over it was bending the form of an old negro woman, whose wrinkled features and gorgeous red and orange head-gear, looked weird and wild through the flame-tinted smoke.