roves coming past presently," said
Rumple, who had made a sort of shelter for himself and Rupert from the
wreckage of the canvas which had been draped round the wagon.

"Perhaps the horse has not been upset at all by the panic of the cattle.
It is not as if it had been a lot of horses rushing across the
encampment in the middle of the night," said Sylvia, who had succeeded
in making Ducky so warm and comfortable that the little girl was falling
off to sleep again, although the rest of them were very wide-awake
indeed.

"I wish that I knew what the time is, but I don't know where to find the
matches, and it is too dark to see the face of my watch," said Rupert.
He was feeling the situation rather keenly, because he could do so very
little to help the others, when, by right of his position as eldest of
the family, he ought to have done so much.

"Don't worry about the time, dear; try to get a little sleep if you can.
You will need it so badly when the morning comes," said Nealie, moving a
little because she found that she was sitting in the frying pan, and she
remembered that it had only been rubbed with a bit of paper after being
used for frying bacon on the day before yesterday.

"I vote that we all go to sleep, seeing that we can do no good by
keeping awake. We can't even sort up this mess of marmalade and pepper,"
said Rumple, whose tongue was still on fire from the last lick of
marmalade which had been so liberally mixed with pepper.

"Someone is coming. I wonder if it is one of the cattle men?" said
Rupert, thrusting his head farther out from the canvas and getting the
full benefit of the cold wind which came howling and moaning out of the
south.

"There are two or three, judging by the noise. Shall we hail them, do
you think?" asked Nealie; but her voice had a nervous ring which gave
Rupert a sudden inspiration and made him say sharply:

"No, no. If they are the cattle men they will most likely hail us, and
if they are not it may be better that they should not take any notice of
us. Lie low, all of you, and don't make a sound while they go by."

"I am horribly afraid that I shall sneeze, for that pepper has got into
my nose!" gasped Don, then went off into a paroxysm of sneezing so
violent that Billykins gurgled with laughter, until Nealie found it
necessary to cover the pair of them with a cushion which she had found
by groping among fragments of broken cups, lumps of sugar, and debris of
all sorts.

Th