ds at the basin furnished for all, and made herself more
disagreeable than Hazel had dreamed her gentle, serviceable Amelia Ellen
ever could have been. No supper would she eat, nor would she remain long
at the table after the men began to file in, with curious eyes towards
the strangers.

She stalked to the rough, unroofed porch in the front and stared off at
the dark vastness, afraid of the wild strangeness, afraid of the
looming mountains, afraid of the multitude of stars. She said it was
ridiculous to have so many stars. It wasn't natural. It was irreverent.
It was like looking too close into heaven when you weren't intended to.

And then a blood-curdling sound arose! It made her very hair stand on
end. She turned with wild eyes and grasped Hazel's arm, but she was too
frightened to utter a sound. Hazel had just come out to sit with her.
The men out of deference to the strangers had withdrawn from their
customary smoking place on the porch to the back of the wood-pile behind
the house. They were alone--the two women--out there in the dark, with
that awful, awful sound!

Amelia Ellen's white lips framed the words "Indians"? "War-whoop"? but
her throat refused her sound and her breath came short.

"Coyotes!" laughed Hazel, secure in her wide experience, with almost a
joyous ring to her voice. The sound of those distant beasts assured her
that she was in the land of her beloved at last and her soul rejoiced.

"Coy--oh----" but Amelia Ellen's voice was lost in the recesses of her
skimpy pillow whither she had fled to bury her startled ears. She had
heard of coyotes, but she had never imagined to hear one outside of a
zooelogical garden, of which she had read and always hoped one day to
visit. There she lay on her hard little bed and quaked until Hazel,
laughing still, came to find her; but all she could get from the poor
soul was a pitiful plaint about Burley. "And what would he say if I was
to be et with one of them creatures? He'd never forgive me, never, never
s'long 's I lived! I hadn't ough' to 'a' come. I hadn't ough' to 'a'
come!"

Nothing Hazel could say would allay her fears. She listened with horror
as the girl attempted to show how harmless the beasts were by telling of
her own night ride up the canyon, and how nothing harmed her. Amelia
Ellen merely looked at her with frozen glance made fiercer by the
flickering candle flare, and answered dully: "An' you knew 'bout 'em all
'long, an' yet you brung me! I