Jake expectorated profusely, spread his feet, and scratched his head. "Seven times seven is forty-nine; fifty dollars fer locatin' makes ninety-nine; I guess she's ninety-nine, boys; gosh darn it, we might have made it a hundred."
"My word!" said Jack. "Isn't that a bit thick?"
There was a merry twinkle in the guide's half-closed eyes. "An' two girls to go out there with you? Whad'ye expec' fer your money? But I was forgettin' about Sittin' Crow. I'll throw off four dollars fer Sittin' Crow. It was worth it."
But we paid him the ninety-nine and Jack threw in another. "We'll make it the even hundred," he said. "Come out and see us when you get a chance; we may have a bite of fried coyote for you."
"Oh, I'll be along, I'll be along," said Jake. "I'll blow out there often."
We shook hands with Jake and turned away with a strange feeling of cutting ourselves adrift. We had not known how quickly an attachment may grow—on the prairies.
CHAPTER VI.
If we thought we had finished with Jake it was evidence that we still had much to learn about our guide's business qualities. Jake had a follow-up peculiarly his own, and that afternoon he came steaming into our presence as we sat in the bare lounge-room of the hotel, making a list of necessities on the back on an envelope.
"I been chasin' you fellows all over hellan-gone," he announced, with a profuse expectoration to facilitate speech. "I got a fistful o' luck fer you. Chap down at the stables—trouble o' some kind or other—wants to sell his horses; as pretty a team o' bays as ever switched a tail in fly-time, an' I can put you next."
"That's good of you," said Jack, "but we've just figured that we can't afford horses. It's a case of horses and no cow, or oxen and a cow, and the vote at the moment stands unanimous for milk to our porridge, even at the risk of our characters. They tell us that even a good man swears when he drives oxen."