Madam called sharply to the horses, “Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat-kerat!” and they started off at a rattling pace, the barrels of dip creaking and squeaking as they swayed under their rope lashings.  Mary bounced about like a bean in a bag, working loose from between the bed-quilt rolls at each gulley, clinging frantically to barrel ends, shaken back and forth like a shuttle.  Indeed, the drive seemed to combine every known form of physical exercise.  Mrs. Yellett herself was in fine fettle; she drove sitting for a while, then rose, standing on a narrow ledge while she held the four ribbons lightly in one hand and tickled the leaders with a long whip carried in the other.  She drove her four horses over the rough road with the skill of a circus equestrienne, balancing easily on the crazy ledge, shifting her weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly to the shrill “Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!” Her costume on this occasion represented joint concessions to her sex and the work that was before her, as the head of a family at the dipping-vat.  She still wore the drum-shaped rabbit-skin cap pulled well down over her forehead for driving.  The great, cable-like braids of hair stood out well below the cap, giving her head an appearance of denseness and solidity, but the rambling curls were still blowing about her face, perhaps adding to the sum total of grotesqueness.  She wore a man’s shirt of gray flannel, well open at the neck, from which the bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity.  A pair of Mr. Yellett’s trousers, stuffed into high, cow-puncher’s boots, that met the hem of a skirt coming barely to the knees, contributed to the originality of her dress.

The wagon had been pitching like a ship at sea through the desert dreariness for about an hour, when Mary Carmichael suddenly became conscious that the prods she had been receiving from time to time in her back were not due either to their manner of locomotion or to the freight carried.  Clinging to two barrels, she waited for the next lurch of the wagon to shake her free from the rolls of bedding, and, at the peril of life and limb, looked round.  Leander hung over the top row of barrels, gesticulating wildly.  The change in the man, since leaving camp some two hours previous, was appalling.  He seemed to have shrivelled away to a wraith of his former self.  His cheeks, his chin, had waned to the vanishing point.  He opened his lips and mouthed horribly, yet his frightful grimacings conveyed no meaning.  Mary called to Mrs. Yellett, but her voice was drowned in the rattle of the wagon, the clatter of four horses’ hoofs, and the continual “Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat!” of the driver.  In the mean time Leander pointed to his mouth and back to the road in indescribably pathetic pantomime.  “Perhaps the poor creature wants to turn back and die in his bed, like a Christian, even if he isn’t one,” thought Mary, as she called and called, Leander still emitting the most inhuman of cries, like the sounds made by deaf mutes in distress.  Presently Mrs. Yellett drew up, and asked in the name of many profane things what was the matter with her companions.