ring buffalo
chips kept them away.

Susan gave the guest the seat of honor--her saddle spread with a
blanket--and herself sat on a pile of skins. The tent had been pitched
on a rise of ground and already the water was draining off. Through
the looped entrance they could see the regular lights of the fires,
spotted on the twilight like the lamps of huge, sedentary glow worms,
and the figures of men recumbent near where the slow smoke spirals
wound languidly up. Above the sweet, moist odor of the rain, the tang
of the burning dung rose, pungent and biting.

Here as the evening deepened they comfortably gossiped, their voices
dropping lower as the camp sunk to rest. They exchanged vows of the
friendship that was to be renewed in California, and then, drawing
closer together, watching the fires die down to sulky red sparks and
the sentinel's figure coming and going on its lonely beat, came to an
exchange of opinions on love and marriage.

Susan was supposed to know most, her proprietorship of David giving her
words the value of experience, but Lucy had most to say. Her tongue
loosened by the hour and a pair of listening ears, she revealed herself
as much preoccupied with all matters of sentiment, and it was only
natural that a love story of her own should be confessed. It was back
in Cooperstown, and he had been an apprentice of Glen's. She hadn't
cared for him at all, judging by excerpts from the scenes of his
courtship he had been treated with unmitigated harshness. But her
words and tones--still entirely scornful with half a continent between
her and the adorer--gave evidence of a regret, of self-accusing, uneasy
doubt, as of one who looks back on lost opportunities. The listener's
ear was caught by it, indicating a state of mind so different from her
own.

"Then you did like him?"

"I didn't like him at all. I couldn't bear him."

"But you seem sorry you didn't marry him."

"Well-- No, I'm not sorry. But"--it was the hour for truth, the still
indifference of the night made a lie seem too trivial for the effort of
telling--"I don't know out here in the wilds whether I'll ever get
anyone else."

CHAPTER VII

By noon the next day the doctor's train had left the New York Company
far behind. Looking back they could see it in gradual stages of
diminishment--a white serpent with a bristling head of scattered
horsemen, then a white worm, its head a collection of dark particles,
then a white threa