“Certainly.”
“An’ that we’ll have to hike through the bear-grass an’ scrub, leavin’ the trail to wind along its unfollered way?”
“Sure I do.”
“Think ye kin stand it?”
“If I can’t, sergeant, you can drop me by the wayside.”
“Drop ye I’ll have to, then, kase I’m kerryin’ despatches that have got to git through. But I can’t take time to send you back, and I can’t waste any more chinnin’ here. I’d feel mighty bad if any harm happened to ye, but my bizness is important. Drop in behind if ye’re bound to come.”
Curtly enough—for Patterson was thinking of the important work before him, and, truth to tell, hated to be bothered with a trailing “petticoat”—the messenger spurred onward, dropping the loop of his carbine-strap over the pommel as he went.
Where the trail entered the scrub he entered it, pointing up a slope and turning southward again on the crest of a divide.
For an hour Dell followed, searching with her eyes to right and left as did Patterson, and listening intently for sounds that might indicate skulking Apaches.
Drawing to a halt in a ravine, where thirsty deer had gouged a water-hole, while the horses were taking a few swallows of water, Patterson spoke for the first time since leaving the Beaver.