Page:Three Young Ranchmen.djvu/143

Rh "When do you suppose we'll reach Dottery's?" questioned Chet, after several miles had been covered.

"If all goes well, we'll get there by one or two o'clock," returned his brother. "You must remember we have Demon Hollow to cross, and that's no fool of a job in the dark."

"Especially if the Demon is abroad," laughed Chet. He was only joking, and did not believe in the old trappers stories about the ghost in hiding at the bottom of the rocky pass.

When darkness fell the hoofstrokes of the horses sounded out doubly loud on the semi-stony road. Yet, to the boys, even this was better than that intense stillness, which made one feel, as Chet expressed it, "a hundred miles from nowhere at all."

So tired were the horses that the boys had their hands full making them keep their gait. They would trot a few steps and then drop into a stolid walk.

"I don't blame them much," said Chet, sympathetically. "It's doing two days work in one. But never mind, they shall have a good rest when it's all over."

By ten o clock it was pitch dark. To be sure the stars were shining, but they gave forth but a