, they held their cups close together and argued as to
which one had the most coffee in it.

When the twilight came there was no one left by the fire but Susan and
the children. She gathered them on a buffalo robe and tucked a blanket
round them watching as sleep flowed over them, invaded and subdued them
even while their lips moved with belated, broken murmurings. The
little girl's hand, waving dreamily in the air, brushed her cheek with
a velvet touch, and sank languidly, up-curled like a rose petal. With
heads together and bodies nestled close they slept, exhaling the
fragrance of healthy childhood, two sparks of matter incased in an
envelope of exquisite flesh, pearly tissue upon which life would trace
a pattern not yet selected.

Darkness closed down on the camp, pressing on the edges of the
firelight like a curious intruder. There was no wind, and the mound of
charring wood sent up a line of smoke straight as a thread, which
somewhere aloft widened and dissolved. The stillness of the wilderness
brooded close and deep, stifling the noises of the day. When the
sounds of suffering from the tent tore the airy veil apart, it
shuddered full of the pain, then the torn edges delicately adhered, and
it was whole again. Once Lucy came, haggard and tight-lipped, and
asked Susan to put on water to heat. Bella was terribly sick, the
doctor wouldn't leave her. The other children were nothing to this.
But the Emigrant Trail was molding Lucy. She made no complaints, and
her nerves were steady as a taut string. It was one of the hazards of
the great adventure to be taken as it came.

After she had gone, and the iron kettle was balanced on a bed of heat,
Susan lay down on her blanket. Fear and loathing were on her. For the
first time a shrinking from life and its requirements came coldly over
her, for the first time her glad expectancy knew a check, fell back
before tremendous things blocking the path. Her dread for her father
was submerged in a larger dread--of the future and what it might bring,
of what might be expected of her, of pains and perils once so far away
they seemed as if she would never reach them, now suddenly close to
her, laying a gripping hand on her heart.

Her face was toward the camp, and she could not see on the plain behind
her a moving shadow bearing down on the fire's glow, visible for miles
in that level country. It advanced noiselessly through the swaying
bushes, till, entering the limi