“You may search me,” was Hippy’s laughing reply. “Here come the other girls. Good gracious! Where do they expect to stow all that stuff? Jim-Sam, pull up here and sling your packs. Is that as fast as those mules can travel? If so you had better leave them at home.”
The guides were too busy arguing to give heed to Hippy’s words, but when they reached the station platform they took hold of the work with surprising alacrity and began rolling packs with skillful hands.
“What are they?” asked Emma, pointing to the lazy mules.
“Jest mules,” answered Jim without looking up, and Sam echoed his statement. “Don’t have to have no names. When my long-haired cayuse does somethin’ he oughtn’t, Sam gives him er kick, an’ when Sam’s critter cuts up capers I give his’n the boot.”
“No names?” wondered Emma. “Yes, but what do you call them when you want them to come to you?”
“Missie, what we calls ’em sometimes ain’t sootable fer a young woman to hear,” grinned Jim.
“Then kindly see that you do not call them,” retorted Emma, turning away.
The Overlanders observed that their guides now wore heavy revolvers and that the saddle-boot of each held a rifle, which aroused apprehension in the minds of at least two of the girls. Jim-Sam, however, assured them that the Coso Valley and the mountain ranges on either side of it were as peaceful as “Sunday meetin’,” and, further, that “nothin’” ever happened there. Something did threaten to happen, though, when it came to lashing the packs to the mules, and Jim-Sam instantly became involved in a violent argument as to how the packs should be “thrown,” the two men in their anger shaking belligerent fists under each other’s nose until they nearly came to blows.
“If I had a disposition like your’n I’d go shoot myself,” raged Jim.
“If I was a cantankerous cuss like you I’d go live with the coyotes where I could snarl all day an’ bark all night. Git outer my way afore I soak ye in the jaw!” threatened Sam.