noon
Piegan was already mounted , watching us whimsically from under the dripping brim of his hat . I shook hands with Lyn , and swung into my saddle . And when Mac had kissed her , we crowded through a gap in the circle of wagons , waved a last good-by , and rode away in the steadily falling rain . From then until near noon we worked our passage if ever men did . On the high benches it was not so bad for the springy , porous turf soaked up the excessive moisture and held its firmness tolerably well . But every bank of any steepness meant a helter-skelter slide to its foot , with either a bog-hole or swimming water when we got there , and getting up the opposite hill was like climbing a greased pole -- except that there was no purse at the top to reward our perseverance . Between the succeeding tablelands lay gumbo flats where the saturated clay hung to the feet of our horses like so much glue , or opened under hoof-pressure and swallowed them to the knees .