well as their spurs in the understanding of their horses, and of
certain natural laws, which the more artificial riders of
civilization are apt to overlook. Hence there was no hesitation or
indecision communicated to the nervous creatures they bestrode, who
swept over crumbling stones and slippery ledges with a momentum
that took away half their weight, and made a stumble or false step,
or indeed anything but an actual collision, almost impossible.
Closing together they avoided the latter, and holding each other
well up, became one irresistible wedge-shaped mass. At times they
yelled, not from consciousness nor bravado, but from the purely
animal instinct of warning and to combat the breathlessness of
their descent, until, reaching the level, they charged across the
gravelly bed of a vanished river, and pulled up at Collinson's
Mill. The mill itself had long since vanished with the river, but
the building that had once stood for it was used as a rude hostelry
for travelers, which, however, bore no legend or invitatory sign.
Those who wanted it, knew it; those who passed it by, gave it no
offense.

Collinson himself stood by the door, smoking a contemplative pipe.
As they rode up, he disengaged himself from the doorpost
listlessly, walked slowly towards them, said reflectively to the
leader, "I've been thinking with you that a vote for Thompson is a
vote thrown away," and prepared to lead the horses towards the
water tank. He had parted with them over twelve hours before, but
his air of simply renewing a recently interrupted conversation was
too common a circumstance to attract their notice. They knew, and
he knew, that no one else had passed that way since he had last
spoken; that the same sun had swung silently above him and the
unchanged landscape, and there had been no interruption nor