"Larned's my headquarters," said he, "and I must go there anyway; so if
you'll give me a good horse, I'll take your dispatches."

"We haven't a decent horse left," said the officer; "but you can take
your pick of some fine government mules."

Will made a gesture of despair. Another race on mule-back with Indians
was not an inviting prospect. There were very few mules like unto his
quondam mouse-colored mount. But he succumbed to the inevitable, picked
out the most enterprising looking mule in the bunch, and set forth. And
neither he nor the mule guessed what was in store for each of them.

At Coon Creek Will dismounted for a drink of water, and the mule
embraced the opportunity to pull away, and start alone on the
wagon-trail to Larned. Will did not suspect that he should have any
trouble in overtaking the capricious beast, but at the end of a mile
he was somewhat concerned. He had threatened and entreated, raged
and cajoled. 'Twas all wasted. The mule was as deaf to prayer as to
objurgation. It browsed contentedly along the even tenor of its way, so
near and yet so far from the young man, who, like "panting time, toil'd
after it in vain." And Larned much more than twenty miles away.

What the poet calls "the golden exhalations of the dawn" began to warm
the gray of the plain. The sun was in the roots of the grass. Four miles
away the lights of Larned twinkled. The only blot on a fair landscape
was the mule--in the middle distance. But there was a wicked gleam in
the eye of the footsore young man in the foreground.

Boom! The sunrise gun at the fort. The mule threw back its head, waved