black eyes he had quite forgotten that he was only a temporary
escort, to be superseded by an entire ox train, of which even now they
were in pursuit. David was a dreamer, and while the young woman
talked, he had seen them both in diminishing perspective, passing
sociably across the plains, over the mountains, into the desert, to
where California edged with a prismatic gleam the verge of the world.
They were to go riding, and talking on, their acquaintance ripening
gradually and delightfully, while the enormous panorama of the
continent unrolled behind them. And it might end in three or four
weeks! The Emigrant Trail looked overwhelmingly long when he could
only see himself and Leff riding over it, and California lost its color
and grew as gray as a line of sea fog.

That evening's camp was pitched in a clearing near the road. The woods
pressed about them, whispering and curious, thrown out and then blotted
as the fires leaped or died. It was the first night's bivouac, and
much noise and bustle went to its accomplishment. The young men
covertly watched the Gillespie Camp. How would this ornamental party
cope with such unfamiliar labors? With its combination of a feminine
element which must be helpless by virtue of a rare and dainty fineness
and a masculine element which could hardly be otherwise because of ill
health, it would seem that all the work must devolve upon the old man.

Nothing, however, was further from the fact. The Gillespies rose to
the occasion with the same dauntless buoyancy that they had shown in
ever attempting the undertaking, and then blithely defying public
opinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness which
had made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as the
doctor pitched the tent like a backwoodsman, and his daughter showed a
skilled acquaintance with campers' biscuit making.

She did it so well, so without hurry and with knowledge, that it was
worth while watching her, if David's own cooking could have spared him.
He did find time once to offer her assistance and that she refused,
politely but curtly. With sleeves rolled to the elbow, her hat off,
showing a roll of hair on the crown of her head separated by a neat
parting from the curls that hung against her cheeks, she was absorbed
in the business in hand. Evidently she was one of those persons to
whom the matter of the moment is the only matter. When her biscuits
were done, puffy and brown, she