There was a sound of men's voices outside, and the wagon came to a jolting halt. Daddy John, on the driver's seat, silhouetted against the circle of sky, slipped the whip into its ring of leather and turned toward the girls. Lucy threw herself backward and lay with her face on the sacks, stifling her tears.

"What are you two girls jawing about in there?" he asked, squinting blindly from the sun dazzle into the clear, amber light of the canvas cavern.

"We're just telling stories and things," said Susan.

The old man peered at Lucy's rec.u.mbent figure.

"Ain't she well?" he queried. "Thought I heard crying."

"Her head aches, it's so hot."

"Let her stay there. We'll do her cooking for her. Just stay where you are, Lucy, and don't worrit about your work."

But the voices outside demanded her. It was the noon halt and Lucy was an important factor in the machinery of the train. Glen's call for her was mingled with the fresh treble of Bob's and Bella's at a farther distance, rose in a plaintive, bovine lowing. She stretched a hand sideways and gripped Susan's skirt.

"I can't go," she gasped in a strangled whisper. "I can't seem to get a hold on myself. Ask Zavier to build the fire and cook. He'll do it, and Courant will help him. And tell the others I'm sick."

Lucy's headache lasted all through the dinner hour, and when the train started she still lay in the back of the doctor's wagon. For once she seemed indifferent to the comfort of her relatives. The clamor that rose about their disorderly fire and unsavory meal came to her ears through the canvas walls, and she remained deaf and unconcerned. When Susan crept in beside her and laid a cool cheek on hers, and asked her if she wanted anything, she said no, she wanted to rest that was all.

Daddy John turned his head in profile and said:

"Let her alone, Missy. She's all tuckered out. They've put too much work on her sence her sister took sick. You let her lie there and I'll keep an eye to her."

Then he turned away and spat, as was his wont when thoughtful. He had seen much of the world, and in his way was a wise old man, but he did not guess the secret springs of Lucy's trouble. Women on the trail should be taken care of as his Missy was. Glen McMurdo was the kind of man who let the women take care of him, and between him and the children and the sick woman they'd half killed the girl with work.

Daddy John had his opinion of Glen, but like most of his opinions he kept it to himself.

Susan had no desire for talk that afternoon. She wanted to be alone to muse on things. As the train took the road for the second stage, she drew her horse back among the sage and let the file of wagons pa.s.s her.

She saw hope gleaming in Leff's eye, and killed it with a stony glance, then called to her father that she was going to ride behind. David was hunting in the hills with Courant, Zavier driving in his stead. The little caravan pa.s.sed her with the dust hovering dense around it and the slouching forms of the pack horses hanging fringe-like in its rear.

They were nearing the end of their pa.s.sage by the river, shrunk to a clear, wild stream which they came upon and lost as the trail bore westward. Their route lay through an interminable sequence of plains held together by channels of communication that filtered through the gaps in hills. The road was crossed by small streams, chuckling at the bottom of gullies, the sides of which were cracked open like pale, parched lips gasping for air. The limpid transparency of the prospect was blotted by the caravan's moving dust cloud. Beyond this the plain stretched, empty as the sky, a brown b.u.t.te rising here and there.

Susan heard hoof beats behind her and turned. Courant was riding toward her, his rifle across his saddle. She made a motion of recognition with her hand and turned away thinking how well he matched the surroundings, his buckskins melting into the fawn-colored shading of the earth, his red hair and bronzed face toning with the umber b.u.t.tes and rustlike stains across the distance. He was of a piece with it, even in its suggestion of an unfeeling, confidant hardness.

He joined her and they paced forward. It was the first time he had ever sought any conversation with her and she was conscious and secretly shy. Heretofore it had been his wont to speak little to her, to sweep an indifferent eye over her which seemed to include her in the unimportant baggage that went to the making of the train. Now, though his manner was brusque, he spoke simply and not discourteously of the hunt in the hills. He had got nothing, but David had killed a black-tailed deer, and possessed by the pa.s.sion of the chase, was following the tracks of a second. The girl flushed with pleasure.

"David's a very good shot," she said complacently, not at all sure of her statement, for David did not excel in the role of Nimrod. "He kept us supplied with buffalo meat all the way up the Platte."

This was a falsehood. Daddy John and Leff had been the hunters of the party. But Susan did not care. Courant had never said a word in her hearing derogatory to David, but she had her suspicions that the romantic nature of her betrothed was not of the stuff the mountain man respected.

"First rate," he said heartily. "I didn't know it. I thought he generally rode with you or drove the wagon."

To an outsider the tone would have seemed all that was frank and open.

But Susan read irony into it. She sat her horse a little squarer and allowed the muse to still further possess her:

"David can shoot anything, an antelope even. He constantly brought them in when we were on the Platte. It was quite easy for him. Daddy John, who's been in all sorts of wild places, says he's never seen a better shot."

A slight uneasiness disturbed the proud flow of her imagination at the thought that Daddy John, questioned on this point, might show a tendency to contradict her testimony. But it didn't matter. The joy of proving David's superiority compensated. And she was setting Courant in his place which had a separate and even rarer charm.

His answer showed no consciousness of the humbling process:

"You think a lot of David, don't you?"

Susan felt her color rising. This time she not only sat squarer in her saddle, but raised her shoulders and chin a trifle.

"Yes. I am engaged to be married to him."

"When will you be married?" said the uncrushable man.

She inclined her head from its haughty pose just so far that she could command his face from an austere eye. Words were ready to go with the quelling glance, but they died unspoken. The man was regarding her with grave, respectful attention. It is difficult to suddenly smite a proud crest when the owner of the crest shows no consciousness of its elevation.

"When we get to California," she said shortly.

"Not till then? Oh, I supposed you were going to marry him at Bridger or along the road if we happened to meet a missionary."

The suggestion amazed, almost appalled her. It pierced through her foolish little play of pride like a stab, jabbing down to her secret, sentient core. Her anger grew stronger, but she told herself she was talking to one of an inferior, untutored order, and it was her part to hold herself in hand.

"We will be married when we get to California," she said, seeing to it that her profile was calm and carried high. "Sometime after we get there and have a home and are settled."

"That's a long time off."

"I suppose so--a year or two."

"A year or two!" he laughed with a careless jovial note. "Oh, you belong to the old towns back there," with a jerk of his head toward the rear. "In the wilderness we don't have such long courtships."

"We? Who are we?"

"The mountain men, the trappers, the voyageurs."

"Yes," she said, her tone flashing into sudden scorn, "they marry squaws."

At this the man threw back his head and burst into a laugh, so deep, so rich, so exuberantly joyous, that it fell upon the plain's grim silence with the incongruous contrast of sunshine on the dust of a dungeon.

She sat upright with her anger boiling toward expression. Before she realized it he had leaned forward and laid his hand on the pommel of her saddle, his face still red and wrinkled with laughter.

"That's all right, little lady, but you don't know quite all about us."

"I know enough," she answered.

"Before you get to California you'll know more. There's a mountain man and a voyageur now in the train. Do you think Zavier and I have squaw wives?"

With the knowledge that Zavier was just then so far from contemplating union with a squaw, she could not say the contemptuous "yes" that was on her tongue. As for the strange man--she shot a glance at him and met the gray eyes still twinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Savage!" she thought, "I've no doubt he has"--and she secretly felt a great desire to know. What she said was, "I've never thought of it, and I haven't the least curiosity about it."

They rode on in silence, then he said,

"What's made you mad?"

"Mad? I'm not mad."

"Not at all?"