rage for a word, did not dare even to meet her gaze lifted
mildly to his. He snatched up the pail and lurched off and Susan
returned to her sewing, smiling to herself.

"He wanted you to take the berries," said Daddy John, who had been
watching.

"Did he?" she queried with the raised brows of innocent surprise. "Why
didn't he say so?"

"Too bashful!"

"He couldn't expect me to take them unless he offered them."

"I should think you'd have guessed it."

She laughed at this, dropping her sewing and looking at the old man
with eyes almost shut.

"Oh, Daddy John," she gurgled. "How clever you are!"

An hour later they began the crossing. The ford of the Vermilion was
one of the most difficult between the Kaw and the Platte Valley. After
threading the swift, brown current, the trail zigzagged up a clay bank,
channeled into deep ruts by the spring's fleet of prairie schooners.
It would be a hard pull to get the doctor's wagon up and David rode
over with Bess and Ben to double up with the mules. It was late
afternoon and the bottom lay below the sunshine steeped in a still
transparent light, where every tint had its own pure value. The air
was growing cool after a noon of blistering heat and from an unseen
backwater frogs had already begun a hoarse, tentative chanting.

The big wagon had already crossed when David on Bess, with Ben at the
end of a trail rope, started into the stream. Susan watched him go,
his tall, high-shouldered figure astride the mare's broad back, one arm
flung outward with the rope dipping to the current. As the water rose
round his feet, he gave a wild, jubilant shout and went forward,
plowing deeper with every step, his cries swelling over the river's low
song.

Susan, left on the near bank to wait till the wagons were drawn up,
lifted herself into the crotch of a cottonwood tree. The pastoral
simplicity of the scene, the men and animals moving through the
silver-threaded water with the wagons waiting and after the work the
camp to be pitched, exhilarated her with a conviction of true living,
of existence flowing naturally as the stream. And for the moment David
seemed the great figure in hers. With a thrill at her heart she
watched him receding through the open wash of air and water, shouting
in the jubilance of his manhood. The mischievous pleasure of her
coquetries was forgotten, and in a rush of glad confidence she felt a
woman's pride in him. This was the way she should s