n the contemplation of his hopeless passion. He was to leave
the train near South Pass and go back into the mountains, and there,
alone, camp on the streams that drained the Powder River country. In
all probability he would never see one of them again. His trapping did
not take him West to the great deserts, and he hated the civilization
where man became a luxurious animal of many needs. Like the buffalo
and the red man he was restricted to the wild lands that sloped away on
either side of the continent's mighty spine. His case was sad, and
Susan held forth on the subject to Lucy, whom she thought callous and
unkind.

"It's terrible to think you'll never see him again," she said, looking
for signs of compassion. "Don't you feel sorry?"

Lucy looked down. She had been complaining to her friend of Zavier's
follies of devotion.

"There are lots of other men in the world," she said indifferently.

Susan fired up. If not yet the authorized owner of a man, she felt her
responsibilities as a coming proprietor. The woman's passion for
interference in matters of sentiment was developing in her.

"Lucy, you're the most hard-hearted girl! Poor Zavier, who's going off
into the mountains and may be killed by the Indians. Don't you feel
any pity for him? And he's in love with you--truly in love. I've
watched him and I know."

She could not refrain from letting a hint of superior wisdom, of an
advantage over the unengaged Lucy, give solemnity to her tone.

Lucy's face flushed.

"He's half an Indian," she said with an edge on her voice. "Doesn't
everyone in the train keep saying that every ten minutes? Do you want
me to fall in love with a man like that?"

"Why no, of course not. You couldn't. That's the sad part of it. He
seems as much like other men as those trappers in the fort who were all
white. Just because he had a Crow mother it seems unjust that he
should be so sort of on the outside of everything. But of course you
couldn't marry him. Nobody ever heard of a girl marrying a half-breed."

Lucy bent over the piece of deer meat that she was cutting apart. They
were preparing supper at the flaring end of a hot day, when the wagons
had crawled through a loose alkaline soil and over myriads of crickets
that crushed sickeningly under the wheels. Both girls were tired,
their throats parched, their hair as dry as hemp, and Lucy was
irritable, her face unsmiling, her movement quick and nervous.

"What