you to stay as a favor to us, dang it!"

Leander delivered this invitation as if it were a threat. His straight-cut
mustache stiffened and projected itself by the pressure of his big lips;
his dark red throat showed as many obstinate creases as an old
snapping-turtle's.

"I'm much obliged to you both. I want you to remember that. We--I--I'll
talk with ye in the morning."

"That means he's going all the same," said Leander, after Uncle John had
closed the outside door.

Sure enough, next morning he had made up his little pack, oiled his boots,
and by breakfast-time was ready for the road. They argued the point long
and fiercely with him whether he should set out on foot or wait a day and
ride with Leander to the Ferry. It was not supposed he could be thinking
of any other road. By to-morrow, if he would but wait, Aunt Polly would
have comfortably outfitted him after the custom of the house; given his
clothes a final "going over" to see everything taut for the journey,
shoved a week's rations into a corn-sack, choosing such condensed forms of
nourishment as the system allowed--nay, straining a point and smuggling in
a nefarious pound or two of real miner's coffee.

Aunt Polly's distress so weighed with her patient that he consented to
remain overnight and ride with Leander as far as the dam across the
Bruneau, at its junction with the Snake. There he would cross and take the
trail down the river, cutting off several miles of the road to the Ferry.
As for going on to see Jimmy or Jimmy's "folks," the nervous resistance
which this plan excited warned the good couple not to press the old man