here he pointed, and someone in the back of the wagon
cursed.

"What d' you call _that_ for luck?" yelled the man, shaking his mittened
fist. "If Nick knew that!"

Dallas could not hear the mingled answers of his companion.

"Well, I call it damned----"

A woman reached up and pulled him into his seat. There was another
shrill chorus, the man whacked the horses till they reared, and the
wagon went rumbling on.

Dallas watched it until it disappeared into the cut at the landing. Then
she sank upon a bench. For a long time she sat, dumb and immovable, her
eyes on the floor. When, finally, she got up, she felt about her, as if
overcome by blindness.

Marylyn had not seen or heard the threatening wagon-driver. Seated
comfortably on the robe by the fire, she strung beads and hummed
contentedly.

Dallas started toward her--stopped--then moved slowly back to the
window, where she took up her watch.

Late that night she sprang from fitful, troubled sleep to hear Simon
lowing and moving about restlessly. A few moments afterward, there came
a mule's long bray from below the shack, followed by the voice of the
section-boss, urging on the team. She found her long cloak and hastened
out.

She could not wait for the wagon to stop before calling anxiously to her
father. "Did you file?" she asked, walking beside Betty.

Lancaster did not answer, but scolded feebly, as if worn with his long
trip. "W'y d' y' fret a man 'fore he c'n git down an' into th' house?"
he demanded. "Ah'm plumb fruz t' death, an' hungry."

She helped him over the wheel and through the door. Then she went back
and, in feverish haste, stabled the mules. On entering the shack, now
dimly lighted by a fire, she did not need to repeat her question. She
read the answer in her father's face.

"No use," Lancaster told her, raising wet, tired eyes to hers. "Th'
claim was gone 'fore ever we got here--filed on las' July." He lay down,
muttering in a delirium of grief and physical weariness.

The fire, made only of dry grass, began to die, the room to darken.
Dallas' face shadowed with it. She was thinking of the level quarter
that was to have blossomed under her eager hands; that was to have
brought comfort to Marylyn and her crippled father. And now the land was
gone from them, had never been theirs--they were only squatters.

Any hour, a nameless man--perhaps he who had gone by that day--might
descend upon them and----

The bail of a bubbling pot slippe