THE NIGHT ADVENTURE CONTINUED
The little cavalcade had to cross the tracks and the crossing was
beside the telegraph office.
“I wonder if he has caught Aunt Winnie’s train yet?” said Dorothy,
aloud.
“We’ll see about that, Miss,” said Lance, the cowboy, and he pulled in
and shouted for the operator:
“Hey, Bill!”
The window opened and the frowsy head of the telegraph man appeared.
“Ketch Number Seventy yet?” asked the cowboy.
“Just. At Massapeke. Your folks has got your message by this time,
ladies.”
“Oh, thank you!” cried Dorothy.
“A thousand times,” added Tavia.
“Come on,” said Lance. “Goo’night, Bill!”
“Goo’night!” responded the operator, and slammed down the window.
They rattled over the crossing and then the ponies set into an easy
trot, led by the cowboy’s Gaby.
Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers had both learned to ride when they were
much younger. Indeed, Tavia had learned to ride bareback upon the
horses left out to pasture around Dalton, in the days when she was a
regular tomboy.
The action of these cow ponies was easy, and the girls enjoyed the
strange ride during the first few miles, at least. They had ridden with
divided skirts at home; therefore their present position in the saddle
was not as strange to them as it might have been.
But there were fifty miles to travel when they left Mrs. Little’s. “It
looks like an awfully big contract,” admitted Tavia.
“Yuh ain’t got tuh look at it all tuh once, Miss,” said Lance,
good-naturedly. “Yuh take it mile by mile, an’ it ain’t so far.”
“That’s so,” declared Tavia. “I never thought of that.” Then to Dorothy
she whispered. “Isn’t he just splendid? And how sweetly he drawls his
words?”
“Now, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy. “If you don’t behave yourself----”
“Why, I am!” cried Tavia. “I think you are too particular for anything,
Doro. Didn’t that large _Little_ lady tell us he was perfectly all
right?”
Dorothy was being jounced around too much just then to make reply. But
she saw that Tavia had recovered completely from her “scare” and was
looking for mischief.
Out on the open prairie the stars gave light enough for the girls to
see Lance better. The track was broader, too, and the trio continued
on, side by side, the cowboy riding between the two girls.
Lance was not a bad looking young man at all. Dorothy began to realize,
too, that he was nowhere near as old as she had at first supposed. His
out of door life had given him that air of maturity.
So, it troubled Dorothy when she saw that Tavia was determined to
“buzz” the cowboy.
“Are you a really, truly cowboy?” the irrepressible asked, demurely.
“Well, yuh might call me that, Ma’am, though I wasn’t borned to it like
some of these old-timers yuh’ll meet out yere.”
“Then you are not a native of the West?”
“Now you’ve said something, Ma’am. I come from back East; but t’was
quite some time ago--believe me!”
“You must have been very young when you came out here--to seek your
fortune, I suppose?” pursued Tavia.
“Tuh git cl’ar of my old man’s strap,” chuckled Lance. “He and I didn’t
hitch wuth a cent. But he was a good old feller at that.”
“And you never went back?” asked Dorothy, becoming interested herself.
“Never got the time for it. Yuh see, Miss, it does seem as though a man
never gets caught up with his work. That’s so!”
“I should think you’d be homesick--want to see your folks,” the
insistent Tavia said.
“Jerusha Juniper! My fam’bly was right glad to git shet of me, I
reckon; all but my mother. But I reckon she’s too old to travel out
yere, an’, as I say, it’s hard for a man like me to git time and money
both together for a vacation. I ’low I’d like to see the ol’ lady right
well,” he concluded.
Scarcely had he spoken when a rattle of ponies’ hoofs behind them
startled their own spirited mounts. The ponies tried to “break” and
run, too, as they heard the rat-tat-tat of the hoofs approaching.
“Whoa, thar, Gaby!” commanded Lance. “Ain’t yuh got a bit o’ sense?”
Then to Dorothy and Tavia he shouted: “Pull hard on them bits, ladies.
They got mouths like sheet-iron--an’ that ain’t no dream!”
The girls pulled their ponies in, as instructed. As they did so two
other ponies appeared beside them in the trail. The girls from the East
could identify the riders as a man and a girl.
“Jerusha Juniper!” yelled Lance, stopping Gaby from bolting with some
difficulty and swinging her across the path of the eastern girls’
mounts, so as to halt them. “Jerusha Juniper! what yuh tryin’ tuh do?
Comin’ cavortin’ along the trail this a-way?”
“Is that you, Lance?” asked the man.
“It shore is--an’ two ladies,” said the cow-puncher, proudly.
“Don’t tell ’em we come this way, Lance,” called a shriller voice,
which Dorothy knew must belong to the girl, as the couple passed and
urged their ponies to a gallop.
“Jerusha Juniper! is it you, Colt--and you, Molly Crater? I’ll be
blessed! Tell on yuh? Reckon not--ef Colt’s fin’lly got up his spunk
tuh take yuh right from under the ol’ man’s nose, Molly.”
“Oh! what is it?” cried Tavia.
Lance began to laugh--and he laughed loudly, sagging from side to side
in his saddle.
“’Scuse me, Ma’am!” he finally got breath to say. “But ef that ain’t
th’ beatenes’!”
“Maybe it is,” said Tavia, with sarcasm. “But until you are a little
more explicit, Mr. Lance, I don’t see how we can join in your hilarity.”
“Ain’t it so?” drawled Lance, still bubbling over with laughter.
“Do be still, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy, admonishingly. “Give Mr.
Lance a chance to tell us.”
“And that I shore will do,” chuckled the cowboy, as they jogged on
again. “I plumb believe the whole county will laugh to-morrer--that is,
if Colt carries it through.”
“Carries _what_ through?” demanded Tavia, sharply.
“Did yuh see that feller an’ gal?” began Lance, in his slow drawl.
“That thar is Jim Colt and Peleg Crater’s darter, Molly. Peleg’s a
pizen critter as ever was; but Molly’s jest as sweet an’ purty as a May
mawnin’--an’ that’s goin’ _some_.
“Wal, this here Jim Colt has been sparkin’ on Molly for a dawg’s
age--yes, Ma’am! That pizen critter, Peleg, done drove him off his
farm--Peleg’s a nestor--time an’ time ag’in. Ain’t a single livin’
thing the matter with the boy; but Peleg don’t wanter lose his
housekeeper. Works that Molly gal like a reg’lar slave.
“Wal! the last time, I hear, Peleg chased Colt with a shotgun, and
purt’ nigh blowed the boy as full of holes as a colander.”
“How awful!” gasped Dorothy.
“What larks!” was Tavia’s comment.
“Guess the smell o’ powder sort o’ put spunk intuh Colt. He’s got th’
gal tuh-night and they’re racin’ for a parson.”
“To get married?” cried Dorothy.
“An elopement?” was Tavia’s delighted cry.
“Shorest thing you know,” agreed Lance.
“My! I’d like to see them married,” cried Tavia.
“And is her father following them, do you suppose, Mr. Lance?” asked
Dorothy Dale, anxiously.
“Ef he knows they’ve started you kin bet he’s after ’em--hot foot!
Unless Colt throwed an’ tied him fust,” added Lance.
“Mercy! is that somebody coming behind us now?” asked Tavia, delighted
at this entirely new source of interest.
But this was a false alarm. The three did ride faster, however,
although Lance warned the girls that the distance to Killock was too
far for them to hurry the ponies much.
“These yere cayuses air all tuh th’ good,” declared the cowboy. “But
there ain’t no use in runnin’ their leetle legs off right now. Somebody
else may wanter use ’em after we git through.”
“But that eloping couple were tearing away as fast as they could go,”
complained Tavia.
“I ’low a shotgun in the rear will make a man ride fast,” chuckled
Lance.
“Aren’t they going to the same town we are?” asked Tavia.
“Killock? No, Ma’am! There’s Parson Hedwith at Branch Coulie--Jerusha
Juniper! I bet they ain’t even goin’ thar,” ejaculated Lance, with
revived interest. “Hop erlong, Gaby! Push on, ladies. Ef yuh wanter see
thet thar marriage, mebbe we kin make it, after all. I bet they air
bound for Bill Whistler’s.”
“Who is he?” asked Tavia. “Somebody like the blacksmith at Gretna
Green?”
“Never hearn tell of _him_, Ma’am; an’ a blacksmith ain’t qualified
tuh marry in this state. But Bill Whistler is. He’s just been made a
Justice of the Peace.”
“A ‘Squire’!” cried Tavia. “So’s my father.”
“Wal, then, Ma’am; you know he kin marry as slick as airy parson,” said
Lance. “It’s for his house Colt and Molly air aimin’, I ’low.”
“Oh, Mr. Lance!” cried Dorothy Dale, enthusiastic herself now, “is Mr.
Whistler’s house on this road?”
“It shore is.”
“Can’t we stop and see them married?”
“That’s what I was thinkin’ on,” declared the cowboy. “I was ’lowin’ to
give the ponies a rest there, anyway. And we’ll need it ourselves.”
“Let’s hurry!” cried Tavia. “Maybe we can catch up with that girl.”
The trio hastened forward. The girls were somewhat tired of riding, for
they had already been in the saddle two hours, but this new topic of
interest made them forget their weariness for the time.
A light suddenly flashed up on the prairie ahead. “That’s in Bill’s
winder,” declared Lance. “Colt and the gal have got thar.”
“Oh, _do_ let’s hurry!” cried Tavia.
In their enthusiasm the girls urged on their little steeds. The ponies
quite took the bits away from Dorothy and Tavia during the last half
mile of the run, and they tore up to the low, slab-built house at a
rattling pace.
There was some disturbance in the house, and the door opened but a
crack. The window had already been shuttered.
“Who’s thar?” demanded a falsetto voice.
“It’s Lance, tell ’em, Bill,” called out the cowboy. “Hold back the
ceremony a minute. These yere young ladies from the East wants ter
stand up with Molly, and if Colt wants a best man, why, I reckon I kin
fill the bill. That’ll make a grand, proper weddin’.”
“Come in,” said the falsetto voice. “And bar the door behind yuh. I
un’erstan’ this yere is a hasty job. They say Peleg’s on the trail
behind ’em.”
Lance was already helping Dorothy and Tavia to dismount. They were as
excited as they could be.
“It’s just as though we were being chased by Indians, and this was a
blockhouse,” whispered Tavia to her chum.
The cowboy hustled the three ponies around to the shed back of the
house. Then he ran back and followed the girls into the open door,
shutting it quickly and dropping the bar into place.
“Shoot, Bill!” exclaimed the cowboy. “We’re all ready, I reckon.”
The girls were amazed at the appearance of the Justice of the Peace.
He was a huge man with bushy red whiskers which looked as though they
would fill a half-bushel measure. And the tiny, shrill, falsetto voice
that came from his mouth when he opened it, almost set Tavia into
hysterics.
“Stand up yere--git in line,” said the Justice, fishing out a book from
behind a littered couch. “I’ll marry yuh as tight and fast as airy
parson in the county.”
At the very moment he was beginning there came from without the thunder
of advancing hoofs. Everybody heard it. Molly Crater grabbed the
bridegroom (who was a good-looking young fellow) by the arm, and sang
out:
“It’s pap and the sheriff!”
The next moment the horses arrived, and there came a thunderous knock
on the door of the slab house.