“Then you have been there?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “I am in this country for my health,” he drawled. On this a certain look passed between my companions, and a certain laugh. A sudden suspicion came to me, which I kept to myself until next afternoon when we had broken this camp where no game save health seemed plentiful, and were down the mountains at Horse Creek and Wind River.
“I don’t believe there is any such place as Still Hunt Spring.”
This I said sitting with a company in the cabin known later on the Postal Route map as Dubois. The nearest post-office then was seventy-five miles away. No one spoke until a minute after, I suppose, when a man slowly remarked: “Some call that place Blind Spring.”
He was presently followed by another, speaking equally slowly: “I’ve heard it called Arapaho Spring.”
“Still Hunt Spring is right.” This was a heavy, rosy-faced man, of hearty and capable appearance. His clothes were strong and good, made of whipcord, but his maroon-colored straw hat so late in the season was the noticeable point in his dress. His voice was assertive, having in it something of authority, if not of menace. “Some claim there’s such a place,” he continued, eying me steadily and curiously, “and some claim there’s not.” (Here he made a pause.) “But I tell you there is.”
He still held his eye upon me with no friendliness. Were they all merely playing on my tenderfoot credulity, or what was it? I was framing a retort when sounds of trouble came from outside.
“Man down in the corral,” exclaimed somebody. “It’s that wild horse.”
Scipio met us, running. “No doctor here?” he panted. “McDonough has bruck his leg, looks like.”
But the doctor was seventy-five miles away—like the post-office.