She tilted her head. "You never know. We couldn't leave the house with nothing to eat in it. Some day—perhaps—— We should have visitors——" She ended the sentence by a noisy clustering of the tins, and ran to her suitcase.
He took it from her hand and carried it out. One of the horses was trying to get back into the buggy, but he quieted it with masterful hand. With one foot on the step she paused.
"Why—that's Pink Eye! He's never been harnessed before, has he?"
"I've been breaking him to it. Good time to try him out on a long trip like this. He'll have the spirit taken out of him in that sixty miles—seventy by the Double Bar-O. We're going across there first. Maybe Cherry Gerard would like to come too; you may be lonesome."
"I don't want Cherry, Jim," she pouted.
He lifted her in and took his seat beside her before he replied:
"It's possible I'll be leaving you for a couple of days in there."
She was looking straight ahead without a word of what was in her mind. But as the horses galloped madly up the sloping trail to the east her spirits rose, and she laughed exultantly.
"Seventy miles won't tire Pink Eye," she gurgled. "He's steel."
Dakota, standing before the door of the cook-house, watched them go, scorning to reply to Mary Aikens' waving hand. It was Bean Slade, emerging hastily from the interior of the shack, who returned it, as Pink Eye and his mate tore along the indistinct eastern trail over the edge of the prairie above.