“I think your employer ought to be ashamed of himself sending you to do the journey. You don’t know where you are, or what direction we’re going in. The horses are nearly foundered, and we may be miles and miles from our destination. What are you going to do?”
“Ke’p goin’ jest as long as the hosses ken ke’p foot to the ground. Guess we’ll ease ’em at the bottom, here. It’s nigh feed time. Say, ma’m, it ain’t no use worritin’. We’ll git som’eres sure. The sun’s dead ahead.”
“What’s the use of that?” Mercy Lascelles snapped at the man’s easy acceptance of the situation. “I wish now I’d come by Leeson Butte.”
“That’s sure how the boss said,” retorted the man. “The Leeson trail is the right one. It’s a good trail, an’ I know most every inch of it. You was set comin’ round through the hills. Guessed you’d had enough prairie on the railroad. It’s up to you. Howsum, we’ll make somewheres by nightfall. Seems to me I got a notion o’ that hill, yonder. That one, out there,” he went on, pointing with his whip at a bald, black cone rising in the distance against the sky. “That kind o’ seems like the peak o’ Devil’s Hill. I ain’t jest sure, but it seems like.”
Mercy looked in the direction. Her eyes were more angry than anxious, yet anxiety was her principal feeling.
“I hope to goodness it is. Devil’s Hill. A nice name. That’s where the camp is, isn’t it? I wish you’d hurry on.”
The teamster spat over the dashboard. A grim smile crept into his eyes. His passenger had worried him with troublesome questions all the journey, and he had long since given up cursing his boss for sending him on the job.
“’Tain’t no use,” he said shortly. Then he explained. “Y’ see, it ’ud be easy droppin’ over the side of this. Guess you ain’t yearnin’ fer glory that way?”
“We’ll never get in at this pace,” the woman cried impatiently.
But the teamster was losing patience, too. Suddenly he became very polite, and his pale blue eyes smiled mischievously down upon his horses’ backs.