I can't. What do you suppose they'd say if I were to ride out
just that way for two miles? They'd have a fit."

"Who'd have a fit? Nobody but Alfred, and I didn't know you'd gotten
afraid of him yet! I say, just _let's_! We'll have a race, and then come
right back." The young man looked boyishly eager.

"It would be nice," she mused. They gazed into each other's eyes like a
pair of children, and laughed.

"Why shouldn't we?" urged the young man. "I'm dead sick of staying in
the moving circle of these confounded wagons. What's the sense of it
all, anyway?"

"Why, Indians, I suppose," said the girl, doubtfully.

"Indians!" he replied, with contempt. "Indians! We haven't seen a sign
of one since we left Pierre. I don't believe there's one in the whole
blasted country. Besides, you know what Alfred said at our last camp?"

"What did Alfred say?"

"Alfred said he hadn't seen even a teepee-trail, and that they must be
all up hunting buffalo. Besides that, you don't imagine for a moment
that your father would take you all this way to Deadwood just for a
lark, if there was the slightest danger, do you?"

"I don't know; I made him."

She looked out over the long sweeping descent to which they were coming,
and the long sweeping ascent that lay beyond. The breeze and the sun
played with the prairie grasses, the breeze riffling them over, and the
sun silvering their under surfaces thus exposed. It was strangely
peaceful, and one almost expected to hear the hum of bees as in a New
England orchard. In it all was no sign of life.

"We'd get lost," she said, finally.

"Oh, no, we wouldn't!" he asserted with all the eagerness of the amateur
plainsman. "I've got that all figured out. You see, our train is going
on a line with that butte behind us and the sun. So if we go ahead, and
keep our shadows just pointing to the butte, we'll be right in their
line of march."

He looked to her for admiration of his cleverness. She seemed convinced.
She agreed, and sent him back to her wagon for some article of invented
necessity. While he was gone she slipped softly over the little hill to
the right, cantered rapidly over two more, and slowed down with a sigh
of satisfaction. One alone could watch the directing shadow as well as
two. She was free and alone. It was the one thing she had desired for
the last six days of the long plains journey, and she enjoyed it now to
the full. No one had seen her go. The drivers droned stupidly along