“It is not very likely. They are a secondhand set. But still one can imagine some luckless girl with a doltish father; some old chap who had outlived his hopes at home, and fancied he was going to be Melchisedec, Moses, and Abraham, rolled into one, in Utah, toted out there by some beastly Elder, who wanted the daughter for his thirteenth. That would be a chance for you and Don Fulano to interfere. I’ll promise you myself and Pumps, if you want to stampede anybody’s wives from the New Jerusalem as we go through.”
“I suppose we have no time to lose, if we expect to make Missouri before winter.”
“No. We will start as soon as you are ready.”
“To-morrow morning, if you please.”
“To-morrow it is.”
To-morrow it was. Having a comrade, I need not wait for the mail-riders. Lucky that I did not. They came only three days after us. But on the Humboldt, the Indians met them, and obliged them to doff the tops of their heads, as a mark of respect to Indian civilization.
We started, two men and seven animals. Each of us had a pack mule and a roadster pony, with a spare one, in case accident should befall either of his wiry brethren.
Pumps and Fulano, as good friends as their masters, trotted along without burden. We rode them rarely. Only often enough to remind them how a saddle feels, and that dangling legs are not frightful. They must be fresh, if we should ever have to run for it. We might; Indians might cast fanciful glances at the tops of our heads. The other horses might give out. So Pumps, with his fantastic dancing-step, that would not crush a grasshopper, and Fulano, grander, prouder, and still untamable to any one but me, went on waiting for their time of action.
I skip the first thousand miles of our journey. Not that it was not exciting, but it might be anybody’s journey. Myriads have made it. It is an old story. I might perhaps make it a new story; but I crowd on now to the proper spot where this drama is to be enacted. The play halts while the scenes shift.