"You see the _Antelope_?" he asked.
She saw the _Antelope_, once more ahead, swan-white in the new daylight
on a great breadth of water which she had earlier heard him tell Ramsey
was Montezuma Bend.
"And you see the _Westwood_ down yonder. Well, when she gets up there
we'll stop killin' time. But why we're killin' it--ask the clerk--or
guess. It's dead easy."
Not given to guessing, she dropped her eyes again on the various groups
beneath with Hugh and Ramsey central among them and did not even see
that Hugh was answering the same riddle from Ramsey.
"Because if we keep these men aboard a few minutes longer," he was
saying, "there'll be no way for them to reach Helena before noon
to-morrow, when we'll be----"
"'Way beyond Memphis," said the river-wise Ramsey.
"Yes."
"And they can't send any troublesome word up the river that can overtake
us," she ventured on, and he assented.
"And may I tell the Gilmores that's as much for Phyllis as for them?"
"I wish you would--and then would go to your rest."
"Humph," she faintly soliloquized and with no other rejoinder remained
looking down on the stage, as he did. It was so near the bank at last
that the men waiting on its inner end moved a step or two forward.
"Why are all those five put off together?" she asked.
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