“To-morrow morning, if possible. But we must hustle, for we have plenty to do before then. Let me think.”
Our captain stood silent for a minute, and then, in a quick, decisive manner, issued his orders.
“I must go,” said he, “and hunt up the sheriff and tell him about those horses. If he’ll go back with us, so much the better. While I’m doing that—and there’s no telling how long it will take me—you must go and buy some hay—the grass here is no good—and a small sack of oats, and give the mules and horses a good feed. When you have done that, go to a store—the one where the post-office is—and buy two fifty-pound sacks of flour and twenty-five pounds of sugar, and wait there until I join you. While you are waiting, buy some writing-paper and write home. That’s all. Off you go!”
In the course of an hour or so we had fulfilled these commands, and had each of us written a long letter home, when Jack joined us in the store. He had been obliged to wait for some time in the sheriff’s office, and had himself utilised the time by writing letters.
“It’s all fixed,” said he. “A deputy sheriff is coming with us; he will come to our camp the first thing to-morrow morning, and we’ll all go together.”
This was very satisfactory; we felt that we should have the law on our side, and if there was any shooting to be done, the deputy would be the one to do it, which, I must confess, was a very comforting reflection.
It was a great satisfaction to me, therefore, when, soon after sunrise, the deputy appeared, a thin, wiry man, with a hooked nose and high cheek-bones; and not only he, but another man, a burly fellow with a black beard. A determined-looking pair they were, and I thought I would a good deal rather have them on my side in a fight than against me.
We set off at once, and soon after midday of the second day we were back again on the hog-back.
As we went down the dry watercourse, the bearded man, looking upward at the rock which overhung the edge of the chasm, remarked:
“That there rock up there, if it was to fall down, would block this passage pretty neat. A man ’ud need stand from under if he didn’t want to be squeezed out as flat as the king of trumps.”