You know I've larned something of the perarie business since we came West, and that was the kind of trail I could have follered wid both eyes shut and me hands handcuffed, and, knowing as we naaded to hurry, we put our mustangs to their best paces." "How was it that you didn't overtake us ?" "You had too much of a start; but when we struck the camp in the mountains--that is, where Lone Wolf and his spalpeens took their breakfast--we wasn't a great way behind 'em.

We swung along at a good pace, Soot trying to time ourselves so that we'd strike 'em 'bout dark, when he ca'c'lated there'd be a good chance to work in on 'em." "How was it you failed ?' "We'd worked that thing as nice as anything you ever heard tell on, if Lone Wolf hadn't played a trick on us.

We had n't gone far on the trail among the mountains, when we found that the spalpeens had separated into two parties--three in one, and something like a hundred in the other." "And you did not know which had charge of me ?" "There couldn't be any sartinty about it, and the best we could do was to make a guess.

Soot got off his mustang and crawled round on his hands and knees, running his fingers over the ground, and looking down as careful like as me mither used to do with my head when she obsarved me scratching it more industrious than usual.

He did n't say much, and arter a time he came back to where his mustang was waitin', and, leanin' agin the beast, looked up in my face, and axed me which party I thought you was in.