' no play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't thinkin' o'
visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"

"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too, talked "goo-goo" to the
baby.

VIII

The Rodneys At Home

All that long and never-to-be-forgotten night the stage lurched through
the darkness with Mary Carmichael the solitary passenger. The fat lady had
warned Johnnie Dax that he was on no account to replenish Chugg's flask,
if he had the wherewithal for replenishment on the premises. Moreover, she
threatened Dax with the fury of her son should he fail in this particular;
and Johnnie, hurt to the quick by the unjust suspicion that he could fail
so signally in his duty to a lady, not only refused to replenish the
flask, but threatened Chugg with a conditional vengeance in the event of
accident befalling the stage. It was with a partially sobered and
much-threatened stage-driver, therefore, that Mary continued her journey
after the supper at Johnnie Dax's, but the knowledge of it brought scant
reassurance, and it is doubtful if the red stage ever harbored any one
more wakeful than the pale, tired girl who watched all the changes from
dark to dawn at the stage window.

Once or twice she caught a glimpse of distant camp-fires burning and knew
that some cattle outfit was camped there for the night; and once they
drove so close that she could hear the cow-boys' voices, enriched and
mellowed by distance, borne to them on the cool, evening wind. It gave a
sense of security to know that these big-hearted, manly lads were within
call, and she watched the dwindling spark of their camp-fires and strained
her ears to catch the last note of their singing, with something of the
feeling of severed comradeship. Range cattle, startled from sleep by the
stage, scrambled to their feet and bolted headlong in the blind impulse of
panic, their horns and the confused massing of their bodies showing in
sharp silhouette against the horizon for a moment, then all would settle
into quiet again. There was no moon that night, but the stars were sown
broadcast--softly yellow stars, lighting the darkness with a shaded luster,
like lamps veiled in pale-yellow gauze. The chill electric glitter of the
stars, as we know it from between the roofs of high houses, this world of
far-flung distance knows not. There the stars are big and still, like the
eyes of a contented woman.

The hoofs of the horses beat the night a