with only a dog's instinct to depend on.
I'm glad I've tried to help him, even if I have failed."

She unwound the long red scarf from her neck and bound her nubia closer
about her throat. Then bending the tallest bush that she could reach she
fastened the bright fabric to its upper limbs and let it swing to its
place again. The scarf spread a little in the breeze and hung above her, a
dumb signal of distress where help was not.

The minutes dragged by like hours to Virginia, trying vainly to decide on
what to do next. The fury of a Plains blizzard would have quickly overcome
her, but this was a lingering fight against cold and a pathless solitude.
Suddenly the memory of one lonely Sabbath day came to her, and how Asher,
always resourceful, had said:

"When you are afraid, pray; but when you are lonely, sing."

She had prayed, and comfort had come with the prayer. She could sing for
comfort, if for nothing else. Somebody might hear. And so she sang. The
song heard sometimes in the little prayer meeting in some country church;
sometimes by sick beds when the end of days is drawing near; sometimes in
hours of shipwreck, above the roar of billows on wide, stormy seas; and
sometimes on battlefields when mangled forms lie waiting the burial trench
and the mournful drumbeat of the last Dead March--the same song rose now
on the lonely prairie winds sweeping out across the hidden trails and
bleak open plains.

Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee,
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me.
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee.

CHAPTER V

A PLAINSMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine;
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
--Kipling.

The little postoffice at Carey's Crossing in Wolf County was full of men
waiting for the mail due at noon. Mail came thrice a week now, and
business on the frontier was looking brighter. The postoffice was only one
feature of the room it occupied. Drugs, hardware, horse-feed, groceries,
and notions each had claims of their own, while beside the United States
Mail Department was an inksplashed