'_This_ is what I
was born for,' and you know you're getting near the truth. To have
some one to go through the fight for, to do the hard work for--that's
the reality after the vision and the dream."

The doctor, thinking of the vanished years of his married life, and his
daughter, of the unknown ones coming, were not looking at the subject
from the same points of view.

"I don't think you make it sound very pleasant," she said, from
returning waves of melancholy. "It's nothing but hardships and danger."

"California's at the end of it, dearie, and they say that's the most
beautiful country in the world."

"It will be a strange country," she said wistfully, not thinking alone
of California.

"Not for long."

"Do you think we'll ever feel at home in it?"

The question came in a faint voice. Why did California, once the goal
of her dreams, now seem an alien land in which she always would be a
stranger?

"We're bringing our home with us--carrying some of it on our backs like
snails and the rest in our hearts like all pioneers. Soon it will
cease being strange, when there are children in it. Where there's a
camp fire and a blanket and a child, that's home, Missy."

He leaned toward her and laid his hand on hers as it rested on the
pommel.

"You'll be so happy in it," he said softly.

A sudden surge of feeling, more poignant than anything she had yet
felt, sent a pricking of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away,
longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly,
some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time she
wished that there was another woman in the train. Her instinct told
her that men could not understand. Unable to bear her father's glad
assurance she said a hasty word about going back and telling Daddy John
and wheeled her horse toward the prairie schooner behind them.

Daddy John welcomed her by pushing up against the roof prop and giving
her two thirds of the driver's seat. With her hands clipped between
her knees she eyed him sideways.

"What do you think's going to happen?" she said, trying to compose her
spirits by teasing him.

"It's going to rain," he answered.

This was not helpful or suggestive of future sympathy, but at any rate,
it was not emotional.

"Now, Daddy John, don't be silly. Would I get off my horse and climb
up beside you to ask you about the weather?"

"I don't know what you'd do, Missy, you've got that wild out here