om was gone. Her cheeks were pale and puffy, even though
emaciated. Her limbs looked thin through her disordered and torn
clothes. She wore a dark-colored hood over her snarled hair, in which
there was chaff mixed with the tangles as if she had been sleeping in
straw. She was black with smoke and ashes. Her skirts were draggled as
if with repeated soaking with dew and rain. Her shoes were worn through
at the toes, and through the holes the bare toes stuck out of openings
in her stockings. While her clothes were really better than when I had
first seen her, she had a beggarly appearance that, coupled with her
look of dejection and misery, went to my heart--she was naturally so
bright and saucy. She looked like a girl who had gone out into the
weather and lived exposed to it until she had tanned and bleached and
weathered and worn like a storm-beaten and discouraged bird with its
plumage soiled and soaked and its spirit broken. And over it all hung
the cloud of impending maternity--a cloud which should display the
rainbow of hope. But with her there was only a lurid light which is more
awful than darkness.

I could not talk with her. I could only give her directions and lend her
aid. I tried putting her on the horse behind me, but he would not carry
double; so I put her in the saddle and walked by or ahead of the horse,
over the blackened and ashy prairie, lit up by the red glare of the
fire, and dotted here and there with little smokes which marked where
there were coals, the remains of vegetable matter which burned more
slowly than the dry grass. She said nothing; but two or three times she
gave a distressed little moan as if she were in pain; but this she
checked as if by an effort.

When we reached the end of the slew, we turned south and crossed the
creek just above the pond which we called Plum Pudd'n' Pond, from the
number of bitterns that lived there. It disappeared when I drained the
marsh in the 'eighties. Then, though, it spread over several acres of
ground, the largest body of water in Monterey County. We splashed
through the west end of it, and Rowena looked out over it as it lay
shining in the glare of the great prairie fire, which had now swept
half-way down the marsh, roaring like a tornado and sending its flames
fifty feet into the air. I could not help thinking what my condition
would have been if I had tried to cross it and been mired in the bog,
and like any good stockman, I was hoping that my cattle