ss showing through force. The foot propelled the children into
a murmurous drowsy heap. One of them, a little girl with a shock of
white hair and a bunch of faded flowers wilting in her tight baby
grasp, looked at her mother with eyes glazed with sleep, a deep look as
though her soul was gazing back from the mysteries of unconsciousness.

"Now lie there till you get your supper," said the mother, having by
gradual pressure pried them out of the way. "And you," to Susan,
"better bring your things over and camp here and use our fire. We've
nearly finished with it."

In the desolation of the morning Susan had wished for a member of her
own sex, not to confide in but to feel that there was some one near,
who, if she did know, could understand. Now here were two. Their
fresh, simple faces on which an artless interest was so naively
displayed, their pleasant voices, not cultured as hers was but women's
voices for all that, gave her spirits a lift. Her depression quite
dropped away, the awful lonely feeling, all the more whelming because
nobody could understand it, departed from her. She ran back to the
camp singing and for the first time that day looked at David, whose
presence she had shunned, with her old, brilliant smile.

An hour later and the big camp rested, relaxed in the fading twilight
that lay a yellow thread of separation between the day's high colors
and the dewless darkness of the night. It was like a scene from the
migrations of the ancient peoples when man wandered with a woman, a
tent, and a herd. The barrier of the wagons, with its girdle of fire
sparks, incased a grassy oval green as a lawn. Here they sat in little
groups, collecting in tent openings as they were wont to collect on
summer nights at front gates and piazza steps. The crooning of women
putting babies to sleep fell in with the babblings of the river. The
men smoked in silence. Nature had taught them something of her large
reticence in their day-long companionship. Some few lounged across the
grass to have speech of the pilot, a grizzled mountain man, who had
been one of the Sublette's trappers, and had wise words to say of the
day's travel and the promise of the weather. But most of them lay on
the grass by the tents where they could see the stars through their
pipe smoke and hear the talk of their wives and the breathing of the
children curled in the blankets.

A youth brought an accordion from his stores and, sitting cross-l