spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only when the
gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the
leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to
return at the peril of their lives.

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few
hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother
Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The
philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to
Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated
statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the
alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode
forward. With the easy good humor characteristic of his class, he
insisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse, "Five-Spot," for the
sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the
party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her
somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton
eyed the possessor of "Five-Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy
included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.

The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the
regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer
some invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It
was distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season the party
soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills into
the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and
difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the
ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party
halted.