at in which the children were crossing the river had upset, and
Mrs. McMurdo had been frightened and "took faint." The children were
all right--only a wetting--but it was a bad time for their mother to
get such a scare.

"I'm not with the women who think it's all right to take such risks.
Stay at home _then_," she said, giving Susan a sage nod out of the
depths of her sunbonnet.

The news made the young girl uneasy. A new reticence, the "grown-up"
sense of the wisdom of silence that she had learned on the trail, made
her keep her own council. Also, there was no one to tell but her
father, and he was the last person who ought to know. The call of
unaided suffering would have brought him as quickly from his buffalo
skins in the tent as from his bed in the old home in Rochester. Susan
resolved to keep it from him, if she had to stand guard over him and
fight them off. Her philosophy was primitive--her own first, and if,
to save her own, others must be sacrificed, then she would aid in the
sacrifice and weep over its victims, weep, but not yield.

When the train had disappeared into the shadows of Ash Hollow, curses,
shouts, and the cracking of whips rising stormily over its descent, the
white dot of the McMurdo's wagon was moving over the blue and green
distance. As it drew near they could see that Glen walked beside the
oxen, and the small figure of Bob ran by the wheel. Neither of the
women were to be seen. "Lazy and riding," Daddy John commented, spying
at them with his far-sighted old eyes. "Tired out and gone to sleep,"
David suggested. Susan's heart sank and she said nothing. It looked
as if something was the matter, and she nerved herself for a struggle.

When Glen saw them, his shout came through the clear air, keen-edged as
a bird's cry. They answered, and he raised a hand in a gesture that
might have been a beckoning or merely a hail. David leaped on a horse
and went galloping through the bending heads of the lupines to meet
them. Susan watched him draw up at Glen's side, lean from his saddle
for a moment's parley, then turn back. The gravity of his face
increased her dread. He dismounted, looking with scared eyes from one
to the other. Mrs. McMurdo was sick. Glen was glad--he couldn't say
how glad--that it was their camp. He'd camp there with them. His wife
wasn't able to go on.

Susan edged up to him, caught his eye and said stealthily:

"Don't tell my father."

He hesitated.

"Th