"It is all I ask," she murmured, as with him she entered the "Outlaw's Home."
CHAPTER XII.
ON THE TRAIL.
It was high noon when the young Texan woke up and when he rose Pond still lay sleeping. The former laughed lightly, as he rose and bathed his face in the limpid water, for the beard of the sleeper had got all awry, showing that it was false.
"No need for a disguise here," said the Texan. "But let him keep it up. When the time comes I'll read him a lesson."
Cutting some antelope stakes, the Texan built up a smokeless fire, and had them nicely broiled when Willie Pond woke up.
"Mercy! how I have slept!" he said, as he looked at the sun, already fast declining toward the west.
"You are not used to passing sleepless nights," said the Texan. "When we are fairly launched into the Indian country you may not sleep so sound. Take hold and eat. A hearty eater on the plains generally stands travel best. To-morrow, it is likely, we'll have a fifty-mile ride or more, if those Black Hillers get sobered down to their work. They'll do well if they make their twenty to-day."
Pond went and bathed his face and hands in the limpid water before eating, and as he expressed it, "rubbed the sleep" out of his eyes; then he went at the toothsome steak with appetite not at all impaired by the pure open air he was breathing.
The meal, taken with comfort and deliberation, occupied a half hour or more, and as there were no dishes to wash, "clearing up things" only consisting in tossing the bones out of the way, wiping their knives on a bunch of grass, scouring them with a plunge or two in the dry sand, they were all ready for next meal-time.