ironical bow turned
on his heel and swung off.

The next morning, in the pallor of the dawn, they started, rolling out
into a gray country with the keen-edged cold of early day in the air,
and Laramie Peak, gold tipped, before them. As the sky brightened and
the prospect began to take on warmer hues, they looked ahead toward the
profiles of the mountains and thought of the journey to come. At this
hour of low vitality it seemed enormous, and they paced forward a
silent, lifeless caravan, the hoof beats sounding hollow on the beaten
track.

Then from behind them came a sound of singing, a man's voice caroling
in the dawn. Both girls wheeled and saw Zavier Leroux ambling after
them on his rough-haired pony, the pack horse behind. He waved his
hand and shouted across the silence:

"I come to go with you as far as South Pass," and then he broke out
again into his singing. It was the song Courant had sung, and as he
heard it he lifted up his voice at the head of the train, and the two
strains blending, the old French chanson swept out over the barren land:

"A la claire fontaine!
M'en allant promener
J'ai trouve l'eau si belle
Que je me suis baigne!"

Susan waved a beckoning hand to the voyageur, then turned to Lucy and
said joyously:

"What fun to have Zavier! He'll keep us laughing all the time. Aren't
you glad he's coming?"

Lucy gave an unenthusiastic "Yes." After the first glance backward she
had bent over her horse smoothing its mane her face suddenly dyed with
a flood of red.

CHAPTER II

Everybody was glad Zavier had come. He brought a spirit of good cheer
into the party which had begun to feel the pressure of the long march
behind them, and the still heavier burden that was to come. His gayety
was irrepressible, his high spirits unflagging. When the others rode
silent in the lifeless hours of the afternoon or drooped in the midday
heats, Zavier, a dust-clouded outline on his shaggy pony, lifted up his
voice in song. Then the chanted melody of French verses issued from
the dust cloud, rising above the rattling of the beaver traps and the
creaking of the slow wheels.

He had one especial favorite that he was wont to sing when he rode
between the two girls. It recounted the adventures of _trois
cavalieres_, and had so many verses that Zavier assured them neither he
nor any other man had ever arrived at the end of them. Should he go to
California with them and sing a verse e