“Hol’ on, honey,” he exclaimed, as I was about starting the team again. “Dere’s de lines looped up on the back band; I’ll jess run ’em out an’ finish up dish yer bit alone.”

“Do you think you can?” I asked, wavering between a longing to rest and my sense of duty.

“T’ink I kin? Dat’s good, now! Yo’ run along down to de ribber an’ hab a good paddle afore hit gits too late.”

Accordingly I slid off of Frank’s back while Joe, gathering in the slack of the lines, clucked encouragingly to him to go on. Instead of doing that the horse wheeled around in the furrow until he had brought my retreating figure into view, then stopped and gazed inquiringly after me.

“Joe,” I called back, halting, “maybe I’d better not leave.”

“Yo’ jess run right erlong, Miss Leslie, honey; dis hoss gwine ter go all right jess soon’s he make up he mine whar yo’ is gwine.”

Glancing back again presently, I found that Joe was right. Frank was working with promising sedateness.

It was deliciously cool down underneath the shadow of the cliff, on the banks of the shallow, bright river. Guard had followed me from the field; he, too, enjoyed the cool water and proceeded to make the most of it. After I had bathed my hot face and hands I sat on the bank and watched him as he splashed about, making sudden, futile darts at the tiny fish that swarmed around him when he was quiet, and went scurrying away like chaff before the wind, the instant that he moved. I had just risen to my feet, intending to start to the house, when Guard suddenly sprang out of the water with a growl. At the same instant the direful squawking of a frightened chicken broke on my ears. The squawking, close at hand at first, receded rapidly. Evidently some animal had caught one of our flock of poultry and was making off with its prize.

There was a wildness of rocks and gnarled cedar trees on the steep mountain slope above us, just beyond the bend in the river, and toward this wild quarter, judging by the outcries—fast lessening in the distance—the animal, whatever it might be, was bearing its prey. I was drenched with a shower of water drops as Guard shot past me, taking the trail with an eager yelp, while I, no less eager, and with as little reflection, ran after him. The dog had cleared the underbrush on the river bank, as I rushed out, and was racing across the little interval, or clear space between the river bank and the first jumble of rocks where the abrupt rise of the mountain slope began. Just in front of him, so close it seemed the next leap would surely enable him to seize the creature, glided, rather than ran, so swift and stealthy was the motion, some large animal, bearing a white chicken in its mouth. A tiny trail of white feathers drifted backward as the animal ran, while the helpless white wings beat the air frantically on either side of the unyielding jaws.

The poor chick might be badly hurt, but it could still squawk and struggle. Indignation gave me renewed strength. I ran forward, shouting, “Sic him, Guard, sic him!” and the next instant my foot caught under a projecting root and I fell headlong to the ground. It really seemed for a blank space as if my fall must have jarred the earth. There was a whirling dance of stars all about my head; the ground rolled and heaved underneath me; sky, earth, and trees swam together, joining that whirling dance of stars. It must have been a full minute before I was able to sit up and weakly wonder what had happened. It all came back to me as a cold, moist nose touched my hand and a sympathetic whimper broke the silence. I turned on Guard reproachfully.

“Why did you leave that thing to come back to me, sir? You could have caught it if you had kept right on after it, and you might have known I’d get along all right without your help. Now, do you go and find it, sir!” and I pointed imperatively, if rather vaguely, towards the jumble of rocks. The chicken’s cries had ceased; there was now nothing to guide the dog, even if he understood, which I, having great faith in his intelligence, believed he did. He ran along the trail for a few yards, stopped, gave a joyful bark, and came running back to me with a stick in his mouth.

I had been trying to teach him to retrieve, and my order, “go find it,” suggested that pastime to him. When he laid the stick at my feet, wagging his tail and looking up in hopeful anticipation of the praise that he felt to be his due, I could not find it in my heart to withhold it. Besides, the chicken thief was, no doubt, safe in his lair at this time, so, abandoning the hopeless pursuit, we made our way homeward.

When Joe came in, and I related our adventure to him, he said: “Yo’ may t’ank yo’ sta’hs, Miss Leslie, dat yo’ done got dat tumble w’en yo’ did! Dat feller wif de black coat, trimmed in yeller, was a lynx—dat’s his’n’s dress ebbery time—an’ I’d ’a’ heap rudder meet up wif a mountain lion, any day, dan one ’o’ dem ar! Land, chile! Ef hit had ’a’ been me, down dar by de ribber, I’d ’a’ helt Guard to keep him still, an’ I’d ’a’ kep’ out o’ sight. Dat’s w’at I’d ’a’ done, honey.”

“Do you recollect, Leslie,” Jessie chimed in, “what Mrs. Loyd told us about her encounter with a lynx, last year? She said that she was in the house one day, when she heard a great outcry among her chickens, right close at hand, in the yard. She ran to the door, and there was a great lynx, chasing the chickens around. The minute the door was opened, they ran toward it, and into the house. The lynx was right behind them, but it stopped as the chickens crowded around her, and she seized the broom and struck at it. Instead of running, it stood its ground and showed its teeth, bristling up and growling. She dropped the broom and sprang into the house, slamming the door shut just as the lynx hurled itself against it. She said that she was almost scared to death. She locked the door, and scrambled up into the loft—she said that she was afraid the cat would take a notion to break in at one of the windows—and the creature stayed outside and killed chickens as long as he pleased, while she stayed up there, trembling, until her husband came home. She said that the next time a bob-cat wanted one of her chickens it could have it, for all of her.”

“I would hate to have Guard get hurt,” I said, looking affectionately at our follower.

CHAPTER XIII

We had looked forward to this coming day with such eager expectation, but now that it was so near, we shrank with dread from facing it. A trouble so great as, under the circumstances, to deserve to be ranked as a calamity, had befallen us. Joe was gone. He had left us without a sign, at the time, of all others in our whole lives, when we most needed him. On the evening of the day that the plowing was done he had retired, as usual, to his little room off the kitchen, and when we awoke in the morning he was gone. That was all. But it was enough. It was a fact that seemed to darken our whole world. It was not alone that we missed his help; we had believed in his fidelity as one believes in the fidelity of a mother, and he had left us without a word of explanation or regret.

The subject was so painful that, by tacit consent, we both avoided it. It would have been better, I think, to have expressed our views freely, for, as we could dwell on nothing else, we seldom spoke at all, and that added to the gloom of the situation.

Joe had been gone several days, and we had been silently struggling in the Slough of Despond, when I awoke one morning filled with a new and ardent resolution, which I proceeded to carry into instant execution.

Jessie was always the first one up. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, and, making a hasty toilet, joined her there. She was grinding coffee in the mill that was fastened securely to the door-jamb. It was, I believe, the noisiest mill in existence; its resonant whi-r-rr was like that of some giant grist-mill. Jessie suspended operations as I drew near to remark:

“You’re up early, Leslie.”

“Yes; I’ve thought of something, and—”

“It’s the early thought that is caught, same’s the early worm,” my sister remarked, unfeelingly. Then she added: “Excuse me a minute, Leslie, I must get this coffee ground, and can’t talk against the mill.”

When the coffee was in the pot on the stove, she turned to me again:

“Now what have you thought of that is so wonderful?”

“It isn’t wonderful, Jessie. It’s sensible.”

“It amounts to the same thing.”

“Not in this case. First, I think we ought to stop grieving over Joe’s desertion.”

Jessie’s bright face clouded instantly:

“It is cruel!” she protested.

“I don’t feel as if we ought to say that, Jessie. Joe has been a good, true, faithful friend to us, and he loved father; we, ourselves, loved father no more than Joe did—”

“Why, Leslie!”

“It is true, Jessie. I feel it, someway, and I am not going to blame Joe any more; not even in my own thoughts. It does no good, and it makes us very unhappy. Let’s try to be cheerful again, Jessie, and make the best of it.”

“We must make the best of it whether we are cheerful or not.”

“Very well, then; one of the first things that we must do, if we are to depend on our own efforts, is to market that cantaloupe crop.”

“What, you and I, Leslie?” Jessie sat down with the bread knife in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other, the better to consider this proposition.

“Just you and I, Jessie. We cannot afford to hire an agent, supposing that one was to be had for the hiring, which is by no means likely. We’ve been eating the melons for days; they are just in their prime, and I know that Joe counted on making quite a little sum on his cantaloupe crop, but if we wait now, hoping for his return, the melons will be ruined; they will be a total loss.”

“You needn’t offer any more arguments, Leslie. I’m glad you thought of it; it’s a pity that I never think of any such thing myself until the procession has gone by. Now let me see, have I got your morning thoughts in order? First, Charity. Toward Joe. Second, Resignation—all capitals—Toward Joe. Third, Labor. For ourselves. Is that right?”

“Yes; if you like to put it that way.”

“You shall have it any way you please, Leslie dear, and I will help you.”

“After breakfast, then, we will harness up the team and drive the wagon into the melon patch, then—we will fill it.”

“Yes, and what then?”

It was like taking a plunge into cold water. I am sure that I was not intended for a huckster, but I managed to respond with some show of courage:

“Why, then I will drive over to the store and sell what I can, and then I will go about among the neighbors with the rest.”

“Will you?” Jessie breathed a sigh of relief. “That will be enterprising, anyway. I should dreadfully hate to drive about peddling melons myself, but there’s such a difference in people about things of that sort.”

Jessie is so exasperatingly prosaic, at times, that she makes me feel either like crying, or like shaking her. On this occasion I was fortunately hindered from doing either by Ralph, who suddenly appeared, demanding to be “dwessed.” After breakfast we harnessed the horses—we could either of us do that as well, and quicker than Joe—then we drove into the enclosure where the olive-tinted little spheres lay thick on the ground and proceeded to fill the wagon-box. The patch was small, but the melons grew in great profusion, and it did not take long. Within a couple of hours I was traveling along the highway, perched upon the high spring seat of the wagon-box, with Guard beside me. Guard was, according to my idea, very good company, and it was, moreover, desirable that he should learn to ride in a wagon and to conduct himself properly while doing so. It was a very warm morning and as the sweet, cloying odor of my wagon load of produce assailed my nostrils, I could not but think of the famous couplet, “You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still!” My route through the settlement might be traced, I fancied, by the fragrance that the melons exhaled.

My first stop was at the store where I disposed of a satisfactory quantity of melons, but after leaving the store the business dragged wearily, and I found myself obliged to take promises to pay in lieu of money from the women of the household when the masculine head chanced to be absent. They always explained, quite as a matter of course, that “he” had left no money with them. It appeared to me, as I patiently booked one promise after another, that “he” could not have kept hired help very long if their wages consisted of nothing more tangible—after the matter of food and lodging was eliminated—than those that fell to the lot of “his” womenfolk. I had observed, with some annoyance, when I first started out, that one of the wagon wheels had a tendency to make plaintive little protests, as if it objected to being put to any use. I could by no means fathom the reason for it, but by mid-afternoon the protest had grown into a piercing shriek. A shriek that even Guard shrank from with an indignant growl.

Less than one-fourth of my load yet remained unsold. I was most anxious to clear it all out, but that ear-piercing sound was becoming maddening. “The wagon must be conjured,” I thought, recalling some of Joe’s fancies. Coming to a place at last, where two roads met, I halted the team and sat considering the question of a return home or a trip to Crusoe, which place I had not yet visited, when the sight of a horseman far down the left-hand road decided me to go in that direction. The horseman was well mounted and going at a good pace. “I don’t care!” I told myself, recklessly, “I’m going to overtake him and make him take some of these melons if I have to pay him for doing it.”

But there was no occasion for my hurrying the horses. When the man on ahead caught the sound of my rapidly-advancing shriek he promptly drew up beside the roadway and awaited my approach, and then I saw that the rider was Mr. Rutledge. He recognized me at the same moment and exclaimed:

“Why, Miss Leslie, is that you?”

“Yes,” I said, meekly, but I felt my face grow red, and was conscious, in spite of my good resolutions, of a sudden resentment against Joe. Why had he left me to do such work as this?

Mr. Rutledge, drawing close to the wagon, ran an inquiring eye over my merchandise.

“Been buying melons?” he asked, adding: “I didn’t know that there was anything of the kind for sale in the valley.”

The observation did not seem to require an answer, and I was silent while he reached into the box and selected one of the smaller melons and held it up laughingly, as if defying me to retake it.

“Findings is keepings!” he said, gayly.

“Also, pilferings,” I returned, triumphantly. After all, I should not be compelled either to urge a sale or to offer a bribe.

“Call it pilfering if you have the face to, but in return for this bit of refreshment I am going to give you some advice.”

“Well?”

“The next time that you take your colored attaché’s place as teamster, make sure that he has greased your wagon wheels. You may not have observed it, but their protests against moving are simply diabolical.”

“Oh, is that what causes that noise?” I asked, leaning down from the seat the better to peer at the wheels in question.

“Certainly; Joe should not have allowed you to go out with them in such shape.”

The laughter had died out of my heart and my voice, but a stubborn, foolish pride held my tongue. I could not tell the mining superintendent, who would have been one of the best of customers, that the melons were for sale, or that Joe had left us. “If I tell him that Joe is gone,” ran my foolish thought, “he will understand that I am peddling melons.” Gathering up the lines, I started the horses quickly, lest he should ask where I got my load. Mr. Rutledge drew his horse aside, waiting for me to pass.

“Be sure to tell Joe about the wheels, when you see him!” he called after me, as the complaining shriek again rent the air.

“Yes,” I returned, “I will;” and added to myself: “When I see him.”

In my anxiety to escape questioning I had forgotten that a person who is riding in a wagon whose wheels need oiling cannot shake off a well-mounted horseman so easily. Underneath the weird outcry of the wheels the steady pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat of the black horse’s hoofs came to my ears, and I glanced back to see Mr. Rutledge close to the hind wheel. Unless he stopped entirely he must of necessity be close at hand. The road that Mr. Rutledge must take in order to reach the mining camp branched off from the one that we were following, at a little distance, and I understood very well that, considering the distance, he did not think it civil to gallop on ahead of me. But suppose he should yet ask me where the melons came from—just suppose it. Should I tell a lie, or should I tell him that I was not even acting as teamster to oblige another? I took up the whip—then I dropped it back into its socket. I had always known myself for, in my quiet way, rather a proud girl, but—it—but—it was not this kind of pride, and I had never before felt myself a coward. Because Mr. Rutledge was a gentleman, was it any worse that he should know—

I drew in the reins sharply, and the team came to a standstill. The sudden cessation of that fearful noise called to mind a line or two that Jessie is fond of quoting: “And silence like a poultice comes, to heal the blows of sound.”

Mr. Rutledge again halted his horse, and turned on me an inquiring look. My throat was dry and husky, and my voice sounded strange in my own ears as I said, in answer to the look:

“I wanted to tell you, Mr. Rutledge, that we raised these melons ourselves, and we are trying to sell them.”

“Are you?”

His tone was very gentle. He regarded me and my dusty, wayworn outfit silently for a space, then he said, this time with no laughter in his voice:

“I take off my hat to you, Miss Leslie”—he suited the action to the word—“and I thank you for teaching me anew the truth of the old saying: ‘True hearts are more than coronets, and simple worth than Norman blood.’”

He replaced his hat with a sweeping bow, touched the black horse lightly with a spurred heel, and was gone. The tears were in my eyes as I watched the little swirl of dust raised by his horse’s hoofs settle back to place. I had not deserved praise, but it was something to feel that others understood how hard and distasteful was this bitter task, and I was glad to remember that he had not added to my humiliation by offering to buy my melons. I meant to sell them all before returning home now, and I did, but it was a long day’s work, and when I reached home I had only five dollars to show for it. “He” had been chiefly absent from home, and I had booked many promises.

Jessie and Ralph met me at the gate as I drove up. Jessie was interested and anxious.

“Why, you have sold all the melons!” Jessie exclaimed, glancing into the wagon-box, and narrowly escaping being knocked over by Guard, as he sprang down from the seat. “You have had good luck, Leslie.”

“Good luck doesn’t mean ready money in this case, Jessie, and that is what we need. There’s just about one more load of melons, and to-morrow we’ll take them out to the storage camp.”

“That may be a good plan,” Jessie admitted reflectively, “but it’s a long drive.”

“Yes, we must get an early start, and we must not forget to oil the wagon wheels,” I said, but I did not mention my meeting with Mr. Rutledge.

CHAPTER XIV

The wagon-box was piled high with the last of our cantaloupe crop. Jessie and I had risen at daylight to pull them. We had been careful to leave a vacant space in the front of the wagon, and this, fitted up with his favorite little chair and plenty of blankets, made a snug harbor for Ralph. The little fellow was wild with excitement and pleasure at the prospect before him. There was room, besides, in the harbor for a well-filled lunch basket, a jug of water, and, if he became tired of walking, for Guard. The dog trotted on beside the wagon, alert and vigilant, until we were well outside of the valley, when, intoxicated, perhaps, by the sight of such boundless miles over which to chase them, he gave himself up to the pursuit of prairie dogs. An entirely futile pursuit in all cases, but Guard seemed unable to understand the hopelessness of it until some miles had been covered and he was panting with fatigue. The wary little creatures always kept within easy reach of their burrows, a fact which Guard did not comprehend until he had scurried wildly through a half-dozen prairie dog towns in succession. But when the conviction did force itself upon him their most insistent and insolent barking was powerless to arrest his further attention. He had learned his lesson.

I had put the rifle and a well-filled cartridge-belt into the wagon thinking that I might get a shot at a jack-rabbit or cotton-tail, but Guard’s experience impressed me as likely to be mine also should I attempt to kill such small game with a rifle, and I left the gun untouched.

The plains were gray with dust and shimmering in the heat. Clouds of the pungent alkali dust were stirred up by the horses’ feet and by the wagon wheels—we had oiled the wheels after an extravagant fashion, I’m afraid, for I do not remember that Joe ever used up an entire jar of lard, as we did, for that purpose—and our throats were parched, our faces blistered, and our eyes smarting before half the distance to the camp was passed over. The wind, what little there was of it, seemed but to add waves of heat to the torturing waves of alkali dust. Ralph, after whimpering a little with the general discomfort, curled down in his nest and dropped off to sleep, but there was no such refuge for Jessie and me.

“It’s a dreadful thing to be poor!” Jessie exclaimed, at last. There was a desolate intonation in her voice, and my own spirits drooped. The horses dropped into a slow walk.

“We shall have one advantage over Mr. Wilson, whatever happens,” Jessie presently continued.

“How is that?” I inquired. It did not look, at the moment, as if we were ever destined to have the advantage of any one.

“We shall not find the men at dinner; they will have had their dinners and gone to work again.”

“We may find them at supper,” I said, giving Frank an impatient slap with the lines. The blow was a light one, but it took him by surprise, and, as was his wont, he stopped and looked back inquiringly, seemingly anxious to know what was meant by such a proceeding. Jessie snatched up the whip, and I laughed as I invited Frank to go on. “Don’t strike him, please, Jessie! You don’t understand Frank, and he doesn’t understand the meaning of a blow; he thinks, when he is doing his work faithfully and gets struck, that it must have been an accident, and he stops to investigate.”

“Dear me! How much you know—or think you do—about horses,” Jessie returned wearily. “You’re worse than old Joe.” She dropped the whip back into its socket with a petulant gesture. “I’m sorry we started, Leslie. Here we’ve been on the road six or eight hours—”

“A little over three hours, Jessie.”

“Well, we’re not in sight of the promised land yet, and I’m nearly roasted; I shall just melt if we keep on this way much longer.”

“Me is melted; me is all water!” cried Ralph, waking up suddenly, and immediately giving way to forlorn tears. The tears plowed tiny furrows through the dust that clung to his moist cheeks, and had settled in grayish circles underneath his eyes. Jessie looked down at the piteous little figure and her own ill-temper vanished.

“Come up here and look round, you poor hot little mite!” she exclaimed, extending one hand and a foot as a sort of impromptu step-ladder. Ralph clambered up with some difficulty and looked around as directed, but the prospect did not have an enlivening effect on him.

“Where is we?” he demanded, turning his large, dust-encircled eyes on each of us in turn.

“On the plains,” I responded briefly. I was driving; the load was heavy, and the horses, worn with fatigue and the heat, lagged more and more; therefore my anxiety grew, and I had no time to waste on trivialities.

“One need not ask why it never rains here, though,” I suddenly observed, “for behold! Jessie, there is the thing that makes rain unnecessary.”

A glimmer of white had been, for some minutes, slowly growing on the horizon. I had thought at first, that it must be a mirage, but it kept its place so steadily, without that swift, undulating, gliding motion that these familiar plains spectacles always present that I presently became convinced that the white glimmer was a lake, and so that we were within a few miles of our objective point.

“Sure enough, that’s the lake!” Jessie exclaimed, after a long look. “Well, that’s some comfort,” was her conclusion. Ralph stood up on the seat between us and looked, too:

“Me wants a dwink!” he cried, after making quite sure that the white shimmer in the distance was that of water.

Jessie slid off the seat and got hold of the water-jug and tin-cup, then she tried to fill the cup, but the result was disastrous.

“You’ll have to stop the horses, Leslie, I shall spill every drop of water at this rate.”

As the wagon came to a standstill, and while Ralph was drinking, Guard suddenly appeared from his place underneath the wagon—he had thus far declined all invitations to ride—and putting his fore feet on the front hub, looked up, whining beseechingly:

“Dard wants some water, too,” Ralph said.

“He’s got to have it, then,” I declared, and climbed quickly out of the wagon.

“I hope you don’t intend to let him drink out of the cup!” Jessie exclaimed.

“No; hand me the jug, and I’ll pour the water into his mouth.”

“Oh, he can’t drink in that way!”

“Just hand me the jug and see.” She complied, and Guard justified my faith in his intelligence by gulping down the water that I poured into his open mouth, very carefully, scarcely spilling a drop.

In the end we decided to get out and eat our lunch in the shade of the wagon, especially as Ralph was plaintively declaring:

“Me so hundry!”

“We’ll give the horses a chance to eat while we’re selling the melons,” I remarked, as much for Frank’s benefit as anything else, for he had turned his head, and was watching us with reproachful interest, as we sat at our meal. He must have thought us very selfish.

Lunch over, we climbed back into the wagon again, after re-packing the basket. Guard also signified his willingness to ride, now, and we went on, much refreshed by the brief stop and the needed lunch which had hardly lost its consolatory effect when, between one and two o’clock, we drew up before the door of the cook’s tent, on the eastern bank of the great water-storage reservoir. The cook was busy, but signified, after a hasty inspection, that our load was all right.

“Better take it in,” he added, nodding toward one of the three men who were lounging about in the vicinity. I suppose that this friendly young gentleman must have been the commissary clerk, or something of that sort. He called a man to take care of our horses, and chatted with us pleasantly, while another man unloaded the melons. He urged us to come into the dining-tent and let the cook “knock us up a dinner,” but this we declined on the plea that we had already dined, and were extremely anxious to take the homeward road as soon as possible.

“It’s so late, you see,” Jessie observed, consulting father’s big silver watch, which she carried.

“We have already been here some time; how late is it, Jessie?” I asked.

“Why, it’s nearly four!” Jessie made the statement in a tone of dismay, adding: “How late it will be before we get home!”

“I can drive home a great deal faster than we came,” I said.

“How far have you got to go?” inquired the clerk, who had told us that his name was Phillips.

“Twenty miles.”

“That’s a good bit; but it’s a moonlight night.”

“Dear me! We don’t care if it is,” Jessie returned, rather crossly; “we want to get home.”

“You’ll get home all right,” Mr. Phillips assured her, easily. “I’ll have Tom put your horses in at once and here’s the money for your load.” He counted out a fascinating little roll of bills, adding, as he tendered the amount to Jessie, who promptly pocketed it, “I hope you’ll excuse my saying that you appear to be a plucky pair of girls. If you’ve anything more to market—” Jessie shook her head:

“There was a reason; we were obliged to sell the melons,” she ended, lamely. The horses, fed, watered, and evidently greatly refreshed, were, by this time, on the wagon. Mr. Phillips helped us in, and, while doing so, his glance fell on the rifle lying under the seat. He took up the gun and ran his eye over it approvingly.

“Either of you shoot?” he inquired.

“My sister shoots pretty well,” Jessie told him, adding: “We really must be starting, and we are a thousand times obliged to you for your kindness.”

“And particularly for buying the melons,” I could not forbear saying.

Mr. Phillips laughed: “The boys will say that it was you who conferred the obligation, when it comes to sampling those melons,” he said. I had gathered up the lines when he added, suddenly: “Wait!” I waited, while he stepped back into the tent. He re-appeared directly, carrying a half dozen big mallards and a couple of jack-rabbits: “You’ll let me make you a present of these, won’t you?” he asked, smiling, persuasively, as he tossed them into the wagon-box. “I was out hunting this morning, and I had good luck, as I always do.” We thanked him heartily for his gift and drove off feeling not only a good deal richer, but much happier than when we had started out.

CHAPTER XV

“Yes,” I answered, “we have,” but I spoke absently. I was listening to again catch a sound that had just reached my ears; faint, far off, but welcome; it was one that we seldom heard in that mountain-guarded valley where our days were passed.

“Did you hear that, Jessie?”

“What?”

“The whistle of a locomotive engine; there it is again! How far off it seems!”

“Sound travels a long way over these plains; there’s nothing to intercept it—but I didn’t hear it.”

“Listen. It will sound again, perhaps, when the train reaches another crossing. It must be way down on the Huerfano. There, didn’t you hear that?”

“Yes; do keep still, Guard.”

Guard, aroused from his nap, was sitting up and looking around with an occasional low growl.

“Seems to me that they must have railway crossings pretty thick down on the Huerfano,” Jessie remarked, after a moment’s silence. “That makes three whistles—if they are whistles—that we’ve heard within as many minutes.”

“That’s true, Jessie—I hadn’t thought of that. It may not be an engine. It sounds louder, instead of diminishing as it would if—keep still, Guard! What in the world is the matter with you!”

For answer, Guard, with every hair on his back erect and standing up like the quills of a porcupine, got up, and wriggled himself under the seat on which we were sitting, making his way to the end of the wagon-box, where he stood with legs braced to keep himself steady, his chin resting on the edge of the tailboard, and his eyes fixed on the darkening roadway over which we had just passed. Every now and then he gave a low, sullen growl, and, even from where we sat, and in the increasing gloom we could see that his white fangs were bared.

“How strangely Guard acts!” exclaimed Jessie, with a sudden catch in her voice, and a dawning fear of—she knew not what—in her eyes. At that instant the sound that I had taken for the far-off, dying whistle of a locomotive, came again to my ears; nearer, more distinct, in increasing volume—a weird, melancholy call—a pursuing cry. The lines were in my hands, and at that instant the horses suddenly sprang forward, faster, faster, until their pace became a tearing run, and then some words of my own, spoken weeks before, flashed into my mind, bringing with them a mental illumination.

“There are wolves!” I had said. I was conscious of an effort to steady my voice, to keep it from shaking, as I thrust the lines into Jessie’s hands. “Try to keep the horses in the road, Jessie; do not check them. I am going back there by Guard.”

“What for?” Jessie’s tones were sharp with apprehension, and again, as if in explanation, came that pursuing chorus. I sprang over the back of the seat, and knelt in the bottom of the wagon-box, securing the rifle and cartridge-belt. Jessie, holding the lines firmly in either hand, shifted her position to look down on me. Her face gleamed white in the dusk as she breathed, rather than spoke: “Wolves, Leslie?”

“Yes.” I had the gun now and staggered to my feet. “Watch the horses, Jessie.” Jessie nodded.

Ralph, roused by the rapid motion, had awakened. He struggled to a sitting posture. “What for is us doin’ so fas’?” he inquired, with interest.

Jessie made no reply, but she put one foot on his short skirt, holding him in place. Some intuition told him what was taking place, perhaps, what might take place. Clasping both chubby hands around Jessie’s foot to steady himself, he sat in silence, making no complaint. The brave spirit within his baby body had risen to meet the crisis as gallantly as could that of any Gordon over whose head a score of years had passed.

Reaching the end of the wagon, I crouched down beside Guard, with rifle poised and finger on the trigger, waiting for the pursuing outcry to resolve itself into tangible shape. I had not long to wait. Dusky shadows came stealing out from either side of the roadway. Shadows that, as I strained my eyes upon them, seemed to grow and multiply, until, in less time than it takes to tell it, we were close beset by a pack of wolves in full cry. The terrified horses were bounding along and the wagon was bouncing after them, at a rate that threatened momentarily to either shatter the wagon or set the horses free from it, but Jessie still kept them in the road. A moment more and the wolves were upon us, and had ceased howling; their quarry was at hand. I could see their eyes flaming in the darkness, and with the rifle muzzle directed toward a couple of those flaming points, I fired. There was a terrific clamor again as the report of the gun died away, and a score or more of our pursuers halted, sniffing at a fallen comrade. But one gaunt long-limbed creature disdained to stop for such a matter. He kept after the wagon. Guard was young and, moreover, this was his first experience with wolves. He had stopped growling, but his eyes seemed to dart fire, and as the wolf that had outstripped its mates sprang up, with gnashing teeth, hurling himself at the tailboard in a determined effort to spring into the wagon, Guard attempted to spring out and grapple with him. I was leaning against the dog, ready to meet the wolf’s closer approach with a bullet, and, in consequence, I felt the impetus of his leap before he could accomplish it. The gun dropped from my hand with a crash as I threw both arms around Guard, intent on holding him in the wagon. I was so far successful that his leap was checked; he fell across the tailboard, his head and forelegs outside. My grip about his body tightened as I felt him slipping. I pulled back mightily, and had the satisfaction of tumbling backward with him into the wagon-box, but not before he had briefly sampled the wolf. The creature’s savage head and cruel eyes appeared above the tailboard, even as I dragged at Guard, who, not to be deterred by my interference, made a vicious lunge at the enemy, and fell back with me, his mouth and throat so full of wolf-hair and hide that he was nearly strangled. But that particular wolf had drawn off. I regained my feet and admonished Guard: “Stay there, sir! Stay right there!” I gasped, and again secured the gun. The wolves, on each side of us now, were running close to the front wheels and to the galloping horses, and one was again trying to leap into the box from the rear. The rifle spoke, and he fell motionless on the road, at the same instant I heard Ralph saying, imperatively: “Do away! Do away I tells ’oo!” I looked around. Ralph was on his knees—no one could have kept footing in that wagon-box just then—a pair of wolves were leaping up wildly beside the near wheel, making futile springs and snaps at him, and just then he lifted something, some dark object from the bottom of the wagon-box, and hurled it at them with all the power of his baby hands. Whatever the object was, its effect on the wolves was instantaneous. The pack had not stopped to look at the wolf brought down by my second shot, but they all stopped, snarling and fighting over Ralph’s missile. A few took on after us, and then Ralph threw another; they stopped again at that, and then I saw that the child was throwing out the game that Phillips had given us. With another command to Guard to remain where he was, I crept back to the pile of game yet remaining, and tossed out what was left. Then I crept on to Jessie.

“Can you slow the horses down?” I shouted in her ear. “The wolves will not follow us again; they have got what they were after.”

The horses knew me, and by dint of much pulling and many soothing words I had them partially quieted, but it took so long to gain even that much control over them that the wolves were far out of sight and sound behind us when I at length ventured to look back. The horses were walking at last, but it was a walk so full of frightened starts and nervous glances that it threatened at any moment to break into a run. By the moonlight Jessie and I looked into each others’ white faces, and, with Ralph cuddled between us, clung together for a breathless instant of thanksgiving. Then—“’Ose dogs was hundry,” Ralph observed, philosophically, adding, as an afterthought: “Me hundry, too; is we mos’ ’ome, ’Essie?”

“We’ll be there soon,” I answered, tremulously. We saw or heard nothing more of the wolves, which were of that cowardly species—a compromise between the skulking coyote and the savage gray wolf, known as “Loafers.” A loafer very seldom attacks man, but he will, if numerous enough, run down and destroy cattle—sometimes horses. In this instance it was undoubtedly the scent of the game in the wagon that attracted them. Once attracted and bent on capture, they are as fiercely determined as their gray cousins, and but for the fortunate accident of Ralph’s using a duck for a projectile they would have kept up the chase until the horses were exhausted, and they were able to help themselves.

It was after nine when we reached home, and never had home seemed a dearer or safer place. The chores all done, Ralph asleep in his little crib, and Guard sleeping the sleep of the just on the kitchen doorstep, Jessie and I sat down by the table to eat a belated supper, and count our hard-won gains. The melon crop was all sold, and it had netted us forty dollars.

CHAPTER XVI

“I’m quite sure that there’s more than forty dollars,” I told myself, turning over my hot pillow in search of a cooler side, and giving it a vigorous shake. “I’m quite sure! There’s the money for Mr. Horton’s mending, that was forty cents; and Miss Jones’s wrapper was two dollars; and that setting of eggs that I sold to Jennie Speers—I don’t remember whether they were two dollars or only fifty cents. Oh, dear! And there was Cleo’s calf; that was—I don’t remember how much it was!”

The longer I remembered and added up, and remembered and subtracted, the less I really knew. By the time that my fifth reckoning had reduced our hoard to twenty-seven dollars I would gladly have gotten up and counted the money again, but Jessie had it in charge and I did not know where she kept it. It was small consolation in the desperate state of uncertainty into which I had worked myself to reflect that I had only myself to blame for this. Being a somewhat imaginative young person, I had reasoned that if burglars were to break into the house and demand to know the whereabouts of our hidden wealth it might be possible for Jessie, who knew, to escape, taking her knowledge with her, while I, who did not know, might safely stand by that declaration. It was rather a far-fetched theory, but Jessie had willingly subscribed to it. If not actually apprehensive of robbery, she was, perhaps, more inclined to trust to her own quiet temper, in a case of emergency, than to my warmer one. At the same time she understood very well that I had an unusual talent for silence. It was this talent that induced me to stay my hand late that night just as I was on the point of rousing Jessie and asking her where she had put the money. She was sleeping soundly and she was very tired.

“I’ll count it all over the first thing in the morning,” I thought; and with the resolution, dropped off to sleep.

It was very late when I awoke. Ralph was still sleeping, but Jessie had risen, and was moving quietly about the house. Above the slight noise that she made I heard distinctly the pu-r—rr of falling water, and knew that it was raining heavily. With the knowledge, the recollection that Joe had gone came back to me with an unusual sense of aggravation. Joe had always done the milking, and it had not rained since he left. Dressing noiselessly, in order not to disturb Ralph, I went out into the kitchen. Jessie looked up as I entered. “I’ll help you milk this morning, Leslie,” she said. “It’s too bad for you to have to putter around in the rain while I’m dry in the house.”

“There’s no use in our both getting wet,” I returned, ungraciously. “You’d much better finish getting breakfast and keep watch of Ralph. If he were to waken and find us both gone he’d probably start out a relief expedition of one in any direction that took his fancy. He’d be glad of the chance to get out in the rain.”

“Who would have thought of its raining so soon when we came home last night. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.”

“There’s none in sight now; we’re inside of one so thick that we can’t see out. I dare say we’ll encounter more than one rain-storm ‘while the days are going by’; but it would be handy if Joe were here this morning.”

“Yes, indeed! I only hope Joe’s conscience acquits him, wherever he is.”

“Oh, I am sure it does—if he has a conscience—for I suppose that’s what you would call his feeling obliged to worry about us,” I said, in quick defence of the absent friend whose actions I might secretly question, but of whom I could not bear that another should speak slightingly.

I put on my old felt hat and took up the milk-pail. Jessie was busy over something that she was cooking in a skillet on the stove, but she glanced up as I opened the door, and a dash of rain came swirling in.

“Why, Leslie Gordon! Are you going out in this storm dressed like that? Here, put on my mackintosh.”

I had forgotten all about wraps, but a shawl or cape would have been better than the long mackintosh that Jessie insisted upon buttoning me into. It was too long; the skirts nearly tripped me up as I started to run down the path to the corral, and when I held it up it was little protection.

The corral where the cows were usually penned over-night was behind the barn. As I came in sight of it a feeling of almost despair swept over me. The corral bars were down, and the cows were gone! I hung the milk-pail bottom-side up on one of the bar posts. The raindrops played a lively tattoo on its resounding sides, while I dropped the mackintosh skirt, regardless of its trailing length, and stood still, trying to recollect that I had put up the bars after we had finished milking on the previous evening. Search my memory as I might, however, I could not find that I had taken this simple but necessary precaution, and, if I had forgotten it, it was useless to suppose that Jessie had not.

“It’s just my negligence!” I remarked, scornfully, to my drenched surroundings; “just my negligence, and now I shall have to hunt for those cows, and in this rain that shuts everything out it will be like looking for a needle in a haymow.”

I took down the pail, seeming to take down an entire chorus of singing water witches with it, and retraced my steps to the house. Even this simple act was performed with some difficulty, for again I stepped on the mackintosh and nearly fell.

“You’ve been very quick with the milking, and breakfast’s all ready,” Jessie remarked, cheerfully, as I entered, and then, catching sight of the empty pail, she exclaimed, “Why, what’s the matter?”

When I told her, she said, reproachfully, “Leslie, of course I supposed that you would put up the bars after we had finished milking last night!”

I am afraid that I was cross as well as tired: “Why, ‘of course,’ Jessie? Why is it, can you tell me, that there is always some one member of a family who is supposed, quite as a matter of course, to make good the short-comings and long-goings of all the others? To straighten out the domestic tangles, to remember, always remember, what the others forget; to be good-tempered when others are ill-tempered; to—”

Jessie laid a brown little hand on my shoulder, checking the torrent of my eloquence; she laid her cheek against my own for a passing instant.

“That’s all easily answered, Leslie dear. The some one that you describe is the soul of a house. When a house has the misfortune not to have such an one in it, it has no soul; the other members are merely forms, moving forms, with impulses.”

I knew that she meant to compliment me, but I would not appear to know it.

“I suppose, then,” I returned, with affected resentment, “that I am a form with impulses. One of the impulses just now is to eat breakfast.”

“Me hundry; me eat breakfuss, too,” proclaimed a shrill, familiar voice at my elbow. I had already taken my seat at the table.

“Eat your breakfast, Leslie,” said Jessie; “I’ll dress Ralph. After breakfast, perhaps, I had better go with you after the cows?” She spoke with some hesitation. As a matter of fact, she does not begin to know the cattle trails as I know them.

“No,” I said; “I’ll go alone, Jessie; I can find them much quicker than you could.”

“They may not have gone far.” Jessie advanced this proposition hopefully.

“Far enough, I’ll warrant. I believe there’s nothing that a cow likes so well as to chase around on a morning like this; especially if she thinks some one is hunting for her.”

“You can take one of the horses—” Jessie began, and, in the irritated state of my mind, it was some satisfaction to be able to promptly veto that proposition.

“Oh, no, indeed! I shall have to go on foot. It seems you turned them out to pasture last night. I think you must have forgotten how hard it is to catch either of the horses when they are both let out at once.”

My sister had the grace to blush slightly, which consoled me a good deal. I hoped that, either as a soul or a form with impulses, she remembered that father or Joe had never made a practice of letting both horses out at once. When one was in the barn, his mate in the pasture could be easily caught. Otherwise, the catching was a work of labor and of pain. Once, indeed, when both had been inadvertently turned out together, father had been obliged to hire a cowboy to come with his lariat and rope Jim, the principal offender. When Jim, with the compelling noose about his neck, had been led ignominiously back to the stable, father had told us never to let them out together again, a warning that Jessie evidently recalled now for the first time.

“Dear me, Leslie! I’m dreadfully sorry!” she exclaimed, lifting Ralph into his high chair; “I just meant to save a little work, and I guess I’ve brought on no end of it!”

“Perhaps not; we’ll leave the barn door open. It’s so cold that they may go in of their own accord after a while.” And that was what they did do, along in the afternoon, when it was quite too late for them to be of any service that day.

My hasty breakfast finished, I got up from the table. “I am going right away, Jessie; it will never do to let the cows lie out all day.”

“No,” Jessie assented. She was waiting on Ralph. I had thrown the mackintosh over a chair near the stove. I had had enough of that, but I must wear something. Picking up the big felt hat, I went into the next room and looked into a closet where a number of garments were hanging. Back in the corner, partially hidden under some other clothing, I caught a glimpse of a worn gray coat—the coat that father had loaned Joe on that fatal morning months ago. The rain dashed fiercely against the window panes as it had on that morning, too, and the sad, dull day seemed to grow sadder and grayer. With a sudden, homesick longing for father’s love and sympathy, I took down the coat. Tears sprang to my eyes at sight of the big, aggressive patch on the left sleeve. Father had praised me for that bit of clumsy workmanship at which Jessie had laughed. I resolved to wear the coat. “I shall feel as if father were with me,” I thought, as I slipped it on. Going out at the front door I did not again encounter Jessie, but as I passed the kitchen windows I saw her glance up and look at me with a startled air.

It was still raining heavily and I started out on a fast walk. Crossing the foot-bridge below the house I ascended the hill on the other side. The cattle always crossed the river without the aid of the foot-bridge, however, and took this route to the upper range, where they were pretty sure to be now. I hoped that the pursuit would not lead me far among the hills. While thus in the open the situation was not unpleasant; I rather enjoyed the feeling of the rain drops in my face. Just as I gained the crest of the hill beyond the river I heard some one shouting, and, looking back, saw Jessie. She was out in the yard in the rain calling and waving the apron that she had snatched off for the purpose. With the noise of the rain and the rushing river it was impossible to make out what she was saying. I was sure, though, that she merely wished to remonstrate with me for not wearing the mackintosh. I waved my hand to let her know that I saw her, and then hurried on down the farther slope of the hill. I walked fast for a long distance without coming upon any trace of the cattle, and then I fell gradually into the slower pace that is meant for staying. As I did so my thoughts again reverted to the money-counting problem that had vexed me over night. In the re-assuring light of day it did not seem so entirely probable that Jessie had been so mistaken in her count, and it did not so much matter that I had forgotten after all to ask her where the money was kept.