ar the Little Blue. The
country was changing, the trees growing thin and scattered and sandy
areas were cropping up through the trail. At night they unfolded the
maps and holding them to the firelight measured the distance to the
valley of the Platte. Once there the first stage of the journey would
be over. When they started from Independence the Platte had shone to
the eyes of their imaginations as a threadlike streak almost as far
away as California. Now they would soon be there. At sunset they
stood on eminences and pointed in its direction, let their mental
vision conjure up Grand Island and sweep forward to the
buffalo-darkened plains and the river sunk in its league-wide bottom,
even peered still further and saw Fort Laramie, a faint, white dot
against the cloudy peaks of mountains.

The afternoon was hot and the camp drowsed. Susan moving away from it
was the one point of animation in the encircling quietude. She was not
in spirit with its lethargy, stepping rapidly in a stirring of light
skirts, her hat held by one string, fanning back and forth from her
hanging hand. Her goal was a spring hidden in a small arroyo that made
a twisted crease in the land's level face. It was a little dell in
which the beauty they were leaving had taken a last stand, decked the
ground with a pied growth of flowers, spread a checkered roof of boughs
against the sun. From a shelf on one side the spring bubbled, clear as
glass, its waters caught and held quivering in a natural basin of rock.

As she slipped over the margin, the scents imprisoned in the sheltered
depths rose to meet her, a sweet, cool tide of fragrance into which she
sank. After the glaring heat above it was like stepping into a
perfumed bath. She lay by the spring, her hands clasped behind her
head, looking up at the trees. The segments of sky between the boughs
were as blue as a turquoise and in this thick intense color the little
leaves seemed as if inlaid. Then a breeze came and the bits of
inlaying shook loose and trembled into silvery confusion. Small
secretive noises came from them as if minute confidences were passing
from bough to bough, and through their murmurous undertone the drip of
the spring fell with a thin, musical tinkle.

Nature was dreaming and Susan dreamed with it. But her dreaming had a
certain definiteness, a distinct thought sustained its diffused
content. She was not self-consciously thinking of her lovers, not
congratulat