They would choose different directions and hide from him separately,--but once was enough for Casey.

He lost them both for an hour in the sand pits twelve miles out of town, and after that he tied them nose to tail and himself held a rope attached to the hindmost, and so made fair time with them, after all.
The mule, Casey said, was just plain damn mule, sloughed off from the army, blase beyond words,--any words at Casey's command, at least.

A lopeared buckskin mule with a hanging lower lip and a chronic tail-switching, that shacked along hour after hour and saved Casey's legs and, more particularly, a bunion that had developed in the past year.
Casey knew the country better than he had known it on his first unprofitable trip into the Tippipahs.

He avoided Furnace Lake, keeping well around the Southern rim of it and making straight for Loco Canyon and the spring there while his water cans still had a pleasant slosh.

There he rested his longears for a day, and disinterred certain tenderfoot luxuries which he had cached when he was there last time.