this trail as in a Pullman palace-car. That was just his way. Pop
will have his joke. You just go to sleep now, if you can, and trust
to me. I'll get you there by eleven o'clock or break a trace.
Breakin' a trace is all the danger there is, anyway," he added,
cheerfully, "so don't fret."

Miss Post could not resist saying to Mrs. Truesdall: "I told you he
was joking."

The stage had proceeded for two hours. Sometimes it dropped with
locked wheels down sheer walls of clay, again it was dragged,
careening drunkenly, out of fathomless pits. It pitched and tossed,
slid and galloped, danced grotesquely from one wheel to another, from
one stone to another, recoiled out of ruts, butted against rocks, and
swept down and out of swollen streams that gurgled between the
spokes.

"If ever I leave Fort Crockett," gasped Mrs. Truesdall between jolts,
"I shall either wait until they build a railroad or walk."

They had all but left the hills, and were approaching the level
prairie. That they might see the better the flaps had been rolled up,
and the soft dry air came freely through the open sides. The mules
were straining over the last hill. On either side only a few of the
buttes were still visible. They stood out in the moonlight as cleanly
cut as the bows of great battleships. The trail at last was level.
Mrs. Truesdall's eyes closed. Her head fell forward. But Miss Post,
weary as she was in body, could not sleep. To her the night-ride was
full of strange and wonderful mysteries. Gratefully she drank in the
dry scent of the prairie-grass, and, holding by the frame of the