Hollows, ditches, gravelly deposits, patches of freshly-springing grasses flew from beneath her rattling hoofs.
She began to smell unpleasantly, once or twice she coughed slightly, but there was no abatement of her strength or speed.
By two o’clock he had passed Red Mountain and begun the descent to the plain.
Ten minutes later the driver of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken and passed by a “man on a Pinto hoss”—an event sufficiently notable for remark.
At half-past two Dick rose in his stirrups with a great shout.
Stars were glittering through the rifted clouds, and beyond him, out of the plain, rose two spires, a flag-staff, and a straggling line of black objects.
Dick jingled his spurs and swung his riata, Jovita bounded forward, and in another moment they swept into Tuttleville, and drew up before the wooden piazza of “The Hotel of All Nations.”
What transpired that night at Tuttleville is not strictly a part of this record.
Briefly I may state, however, that after Jovita had been handed over to a sleepy hostler, whom she at once kicked into unpleasant consciousness, Dick sallied out with the bar-keeper for a tour of the sleeping town.
Lights still gleamed from a few saloons and gambling-houses; but, avoiding these, they stopped before several closed shops, and by persistent tapping and judicious outcry roused the proprietors from their beds, and made them unbar the doors of their magazines and expose their wares.