We found Mr. Hamilton as agreeable a companion as on the preceding day, but a most desperate rider. He galloped on at such a rate that had I not exchanged my pony for the fine, noble Jerry, I should have been in danger of being left behind.
Well mounted as we all were, he sometimes nearly distanced us. We were now among the branches of the Pickatonick,[58] and the country had lost its prairie character, and become more rough and broken. We went dashing on, sometimes down ravines, sometimes through narrow passes, where, as I followed, I left fragments of my veil upon the projecting and interwoven branches. Once my hat became entangled, and had not my husband sprung to my rescue, I must have shared the fate of Absalom, Jerry's ambition to keep his place in the race making it probable he would do as did the mule who was under the unfortunate prince.
There was no halting upon the route, and as we kept the same pace until three o'clock in the afternoon, it was beyond a question that when we reached "Kellogg's," we had travelled at least thirty miles. One of my greatest annoyances during the ride had been the behavior of the little beast Brunêt. He had been hitherto used as a saddle-horse, and had been accustomed to a station in the file near the guide or leader. He did not relish being put in the background as a pack-horse, and accordingly, whenever we approached a stream, where the file broke up to permit each horseman to choose his own place of fording, it was invariably the case that just as I was reining Jerry into the water, Brunêt would come rushing past and throw himself into our very footsteps. Plunging, snorting, and splashing me with water, and sometimes even startling Jerry into a leap aside, he more than once brought me into imminent danger of being tossed into the stream. It was in vain that, after one or two such adventures, I learned to hold back and give the vexatious little animal the precedence. His passion seemed to be to go into the water precisely at the moment Jerry did, and I was obliged at last to make a bargain with young Roy to dismount and hold him at every stream until I had got safely across.
"Kellogg's"[P] was a comfortable mansion, just within the verge of a pleasant "grove of timber," as a small forest is called by western travellers. We found Mrs. Kellogg a very respectable-looking matron, who soon informed us she was from the city of New York. She appeared proud and delighted to entertain Mr. Hamilton, for whose family, she took occasion to tell us, she had, in former days, been in the habit of doing needlework.