“Got your gun loaded?”
Dan kicked the heavy double-barreled shotgun at his feet and replied again:
“Youbetcha!”
“Do—do wild animals infest the road?” Betty had asked stammeringly.
“Not much,” said Hurley. “But Dan carries a heap of registered mail in which wild men, rather than wild animals, might be interested.”
“Youbetcha!” agreed Dan.
Hurley glanced sideways at Betty’s face, caught its expression, and exploded into laughter.
“You’ve come to ‘Youbetcha Land,’ Miss Betty,” he said, when he could speak again.
“He is a character,” chuckled Hunt on her other side.
The suggestion of highwaymen stuck in the girl’s mind. She looked from Lizard Dan’s weapon to the ivory butt of the heavy revolver pouched at Joe Hurley’s waist. These weapons could not be worn exactly for show—an exhibition of the vanity of rather uncouth minds. It fretted her though without frightening her, this phase of Western life. It was not the possibility of gun-fights and brawls and the offices of Judge Lynch that made Betty Hunt shrink from contact with this country and its people.