“Two poor little orphings, Sleepy. Honest, I feel like cryin’. If I didn’t wear long pants, I’d sure bawl a plenty. But I have to laugh when I remember how them jiggers looked at us. They sure didn’t want to set there with folded hands, did they? I sure looked for one of ’em to make a break, but they remained comatose.”
“Yeah, and we’ll remain comatose, if some of them fellers run across us in their present frame of mind. Where do we go?”
“I dunno,” confessed Hashknife. “As far I can see, we ain’t got no place to go. The sheriff will probably arrest us for horse stealin’, and—aw, I dunno. Let’s go and visit Jack Hartwell. Nobody likes him, and misery likes company.”
“All right,” laughed Sleepy. “Which way is his place from here?”
“Where is here?” asked Hashknife. “We’re kinda lost, Sleepy.”
It was so dark that they had lost all sense of direction, and they knew it would be several hours before the moon came up.
“Well, we won’t get there unless we start,” declared Hashknife. “Jack Hartwell lives somewhere, and if we go far enough we might strike a road. C’mon.”
Hashknife instinctively swung to the left, and they started out in singe file. It was slow traveling, as the country was broken up with small cañons, washouts and brushy swales, where they were forced to swing wide in order to cross.
For about an hour they poked aimlessly along, hoping to cross a road or run into some sort of habitation.
“I’ll betcha we’re in another county,” said Sleepy. “We’ve come miles and miles. I figure that we’ve passed Jack Hartwell’s place.”