“Wade and I are going after the lady. Do you take this gentleman, and deliver him safe and sound to Captain Ruby at Fort Laramie. Tell Ruby to keep him till we come, and treat him as he would General Scott. Drive our mules and the mustangs to Laramie, and leave them there. We trust the whole to you. There’s no time to talk. Tell me what money you want for the work, and I’ll pay you now in advance, whatever you ask.”
“I’ll be switched round creation ef you do. Not the first red! You think, bekase I’m a Mormon, as you call it, I haint got no nat’ral feelin’s. Why, boys, I’d go with you myself after the gal, and let Uncle Sam’s mail lie there and wait till every letter answered itself, ef I had a kettrypid what could range with yourn. No, no, Jake Shamberlain aint a hog, and his mail boys aint of the pork kind. I’ll take keer of the old gentleman, and put him through jest ’z if he was my own father, and wuth a million slugs. And ef that aint talkin’ fair, I dunno what is.”
We both griped Jake Shamberlain’s friendly fist.
Mr. Clitheroe, weary with his morning’s ride, faint and sick after his bonds of the night, and now crushed in spirit and utterly bewildered with these sudden changes, was handed over to his new protector.
The emancipating force had found him. He was free of his Mormonism. His delusion had discarded him. A rough and cruel termination of his hopes! How would he bear this disappointment? Would his heart break? Would his mind break? his life break?
We could not check ourselves to think of him. Our thoughts were galloping furiously on in succor of the daughter, fallen on an evil fate.
While this hasty talk had been going on, I had shifted our saddles to Pumps and Fulano. Noble fellows! they took in the calm excitement of my mood. They grew eager as a greyhound when he sees the hare break cover. They divined that THEIR MOMENT HAD COME! Now their force was to be pitted against brutality. Horse against brute,—which would win? I dared not think of the purpose of our going. Only, Begone! Begone! was ringing in my ears, and a figure I dared not see was before my eyes.
I was frenzied with excitement; but I held myself steady as one holds his rifle when a buck comes leaping out of the forest into the prairie, where rifle and man have been waiting and trembling, while the hounds’ bay came nearer, nearer. I drew strap and tied knot of our girths, and doubled the knot. There must be no chafing of saddles, no dismounting to girth up. That was to be a gallop, I knew, where a man who fell to the rear would be too late for the fight.
Brent, meantime, had rolled up a little stock of provisions in each man’s double blanket. We were going we knew not how far. We must be ready for work of many days. A moment’s calmness over our preparations now might save desolate defeat or death hereafter. We lashed our blankets with their contents on firmly by the buckskin thongs which are attached to the cantle of a California saddle,—the only saddle for such work as we—horses and men—have on the plains.
“Rifles?” said I.