road map that the boys had brought along showed them that they
were now eleven miles from Gridley.

"Pretty fair work," muttered Tom, "considering that these roads
were built by men who had never seen any better kind."

"We can more than double the distance," suggested Dave, "before
we go into camp for the night."

"If we hike a couple more miles this morning, then halt, get the
noon meal and rest until two o'clock," replied young Prescott,
"I think we shall do better."

"If we've gone only eleven miles," protested Darrin, "then I'm
certainly good for twenty-five miles in all to-day, and I believe
the rest of you are, too."

"Wait until we've done eighteen or twenty miles," Prescott proposed.
"Then we can take a vote about making it twenty-five."

"For one thing," Darry objected, "none of us actually walks twenty-five
miles when we cover that distance. We take turns riding on the
wagon, and, as there are six of us, that means that each fellow
rides something like four miles of the distance covered."

"What Darry is driving at," proposed Danny Grin, "is that he wants
to devote himself wholly to walking hereafter. He doesn't care
about driving the horse."

"I'm big enough and cranky enough to do my own talking, when there