's it matter what a man's parents are if he's kind to you?" she
said, cutting viciously into the meat. "It's a lot to have some one
fill the kettles for you and help you get the firewood, and when you're
tired tell you to go back in the wagon and go to sleep. Nobody does
that for me but Zavier."

It was the first time she had shown any appreciation of her swain's
attentions. She expressed the normal, feminine point of view that her
friend had been looking for, and as soon as she heard it Susan adroitly
vaulted to the other side:

"But, Lucy, you _can't_ marry him!"

"Who says I'm going to?" snapped Lucy. "Do I have to marry every
Indian that makes eyes at me? All the men in the fort were doing it.
They hadn't a look for anyone else."

Susan took this with reservations. A good many of the men in the fort
had made eyes at her. It was rather grasping of Lucy to take it all to
herself, and in her surprise at the extent of her friend's claims she
was silent.

"As for me," Lucy went on, "I'm dead sick of this journey. I wish we
could stop or go back or do something. But we've got to keep on and on
to the end of nowhere. It seems as if we were going forever in these
tiresome old wagons or on horses that get lame every other day, and
then you have to walk. I don't mind living in a tent. I like it. But
I hate always going on, never having a minute to rest, getting up in
the morning when I'm only half awake, and having to cook at night when
I'm so tired I'd just like to lie down on the ground without taking my
clothes off and go to sleep there. I wish I'd never come. I wish I'd
married the man in Cooperstown that I wouldn't have wiped my feet on
then."

She slapped the frying pan on the fire and threw the meat into it. Her
voice and lips were trembling. With a quick, backward bend she stooped
to pick up a fork, and Susan saw her face puckered and quivering like a
child's about to cry.

"Oh, Lucy," she cried in a burst of sympathy. "I didn't know you felt
like that," and she tried to clasp the lithe uncorseted waist that
flinched from her touch. Lucy's elbow, thrown suddenly out, kept her
at a distance, and she fell back repulsed, but with consolations still
ready to be offered.

"Let me alone," said Lucy, her face averted. "I'm that tired I don't
know what I'm saying. Go and get the children for supper, and don't
let them stand round staring at me or they'll be asking questions."

She snatched the