We two have the back seat, Tom sits in front with Billings, and the
"swamper" sits anywhere on the lumps and bumps which our baggage
makes, covered by the canvas wagon-sheet. He might have ridden his
horse--everybody supposed he would; but that would have separated him from
the object of his existence; the object sternly ignoring him, and riding
for miles with her face turned away, her hand to her hat, which the wind
persistently snatched at. It was her wide-brimmed sketching-hat--rather a
daring creation but monstrously becoming, and I had persuaded her to wear
it, the morning being delusively clear, thinking we were to have one of
our midsummer scorchers that would have burned her fair English face to a
blister.
Mr. Harshaw thought she would be tired, wearing her hand continually in the
air, and suggested various mechanical substitutes,--a string attached to
the hat-trimming, a scarf tied over her head; but a snubbing was all the
reward he got for his sympathy.
"When this hand is tired I take the other one," she said airily.
We lunched at Ten Mile, by the railroad track. Do you remember that
desolate place? The Oregon Short Line used to leave us there at a little
station called Kuna.
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