charred branches dropped. Outside the night hung, deep and silent.
Susan hovered on the outskirts of the glow. Darkness was thickening,
creeping from the hills that lay inky-edged against the scarlet of the
sky. Once she sent up a high cry of David's name. Courant, busy with
his horses, lifted his head and looked at her, scowling over his
shoulder.

"Why are you calling?" he said. "He can see the fire."

She came back and stood near him, her eyes on him in uneasy scrutiny:
"We shouldn't have gone on. We should have waited for him."

There was questioning and also a suggestion of condemnation in her
voice. She was anxious and her tone and manner showed she thought it
his fault.

He bent to loosen a girth.

"Are you afraid he's lost?" he said, his face against the horse.

"No. But if he was?"

"Well! And if he was?"

The girth was uncinched and he swept saddle and blanket to the ground.

"We'd have to go back for him, and you say we must lose no time."

He kicked the things aside and made no answer. Then as he groped for
the picket pins he was conscious that she turned again with the nervous
movement of worry and swept the plain.

"He was sick. We oughtn't to have gone on," she repeated, and the note
of blame was stronger. "Oh, I wish he'd come!"

Their conversation had been carried on in a low key. Suddenly Courant,
wheeling round on her, spoke in the raised tone of anger.

"And am I to stop the train because that fool don't know enough or care
enough to picket his horses? Is it always to be him? Excuses made and
things done for him as if he was a sick girl or a baby. Let him be
lost, and stay lost, and be damned to him."

Daddy John looked up from the sheaf of newly gathered sage with the
alertness of a scared monkey. Susan stepped back, feeling suddenly
breathless. Courant made a movement as if to follow her, then stopped,
his face rived with lines and red with rage. He was shaken by what to
her was entirely inexplicable anger, and in her amazement she stared
vacantly at him.

"What's that, what's that?" chirped Daddy John, scrambling to his feet
and coming toward them with chin thrust belligerently forward and
blinking eyes full of fight.

Neither spoke to him and he added sharply:

"Didn't I hear swearing? Who's swearing now?" as if he had his doubts
that it might be Susan.

Courant with a stifled phrase turned from them, picked up his hammer
and began driving in the stake