324
ACROSS THE BLUES.
my feet barely touched the floor. With some anxiety I waited the start. Then I happened to think of my uncovered hands, and was in the act of pulling on a pair of gloves, when I heard, "All right, Joe." Then came the whiz and crack of a whiplash, and I felt the whole business start from under me as I turned a back somersault and lit forked end up among the mail bags. Joe didn't look round, so I crawled back to my perch, resolved to postpone putting on gloves until a more auspicious time. 'Twas beautiful to see how those little cayuse ponies shook the mud from their feet as they waltzed down the Umatilla reservation, and I felt the effect of their morning gambols long before we reached the base of the mountains. They were plucky little brutes, as well as pretty, and their spotted skins reminded me of my grandmother's best company quilt.
By nine o'clock we reached the line where rain left off and snow began, and about noon crossed the first summit. Joe had spoken but seldom all morning, but after leaving Summit Station he turned to me and said: "Stranger, you aint ever staged much I know. Well, now, thar's two things we hev to look arter. The fust one is company's consideration fur the hosses, and tother is our consid' fur goin' in on time. Up the hill I looked out fur company's, and now I'll look out fur Washoe Joe's. Git up?" Pop goes the whip, and down the mountain we ride like grim death in his chariot. How tenaciously I held to that board, and how I did grit my teeth!
But I lost all hope early in the race, and as section after section of my vertebra telescoped, I felt the "sweet by and by" near, and so tried to divert my thoughts from things terrestrial. But somehow I couldn't make connection. I'd shut my eyes and start off with what I thought was a beautifully gilt edged petition, but before I could get to the clinching part the wheels would make a perpendicular drop and leave me suspended for a moment in mid air, my eyes and mouth wide open and prayer all gone. Then I'd try it over and over again, but 'twas no use; I couldn't make it go. The constant whiz of the lash kept that animated streak of patchwork on the jump, and my thoughts badly disconnected. At the last moment, as I thought, I made one grab to feel if my journal was safe, and back I went on the mail bags again, just in time for my face to catch a whole pailful of mud and snow-water that came pouring down the wheel. In my bewildered state of mind I thought it the first cold wave of Jordan, and at that supreme moment I opened my eyes for a peep at the farther shore, and discovered the road was getting smoother.
At Pelican Station a new driver took the lines, and how he ever got through the canyon will always be a mystery. But he did, and landed me safe at La Grande in time for supper, but wet as a new made Christian. Four miles from town a hard rain had come up and I had asked for a poncho. John smiled like an old Jackson County Missourian as he replied, "Mister, we don't hev ary o' them things;" so I had to take the rain; and while streams poured down my back and never stopped till they got twixt me and the board, I was sustained through it all by the recollection of that one unmistakable grin.
Happy was I the next morning to behold a buckboard and span of jacks waiting to carry me to Joseph. In all my life I had never ridden a buckboard, but I was sure this would be a picnic compared to the instrument of torture which I had endured the day before. The morning was perfect, the scenery all that heart could wish, and for twenty miles the smooth, hard road re-