nging willows, where
the deer nibbled--a cool black. Out of it, the meadow-larks showed their
good-luck waistcoats and rippled their tunes; out of it, countless wild
roses smiled up pinkly to the sun.

But all the loveliness of the new day only mocked at the lonely girls in
the wagon. To them, the grey sands of their desert home, the blistering
"northers," the brassy skies, were, unconsciously, synonymous of safety
and peace. More than once, as they pressed on, the old, red-painted
section-house rose before them, a very haven.

Behind, the squat shack was gradually lessening in size. A jutting
corner had already shut from view its crippled sentry.

There was little conversation. Marylyn, for a time, could not dismiss
the subject that had confronted her at the start. Finally, however, she
put it aside impatiently, and let herself drift on a pleasant current.
And Dallas--her thoughts were also harried. For as her home dropped,
mile by mile, in the distance, and she was forced to meet the question
of what she would say and do when she arrived at Clark's, her feelings
underwent a marvellous change. It had been easy enough, in the
excitement following her discovery, to contemplate a meeting with
Lounsbury. But that excitement having dwindled not a little, the idea of
seeing him and of talking to him mounted in proportional importance. She
saw herself drawing up before his store, or standing just within as she
related her story. She saw his face, the blue eyes, full of fun--and she
had not met him since that evening! Her heart began to thump with her
picturing, its poundings playing up to her throat and down again. Want
of food was giving her a sensation of weakness and sinking. But this
seemed also to be the result of mental, and not physical, suffering. She
was torn by a desire to retreat.

Then darted through her mind the remembrance of Marylyn's midnight
confidence. It was a blow on a wound. She glanced at her sister
entreatingly. And what she fancied she read in the other's eyes
instantly altered the desire to turn--made her send the mules forward at
a better pace. Marylyn was sitting stiffly upright, bracing herself with
her hands. Her head was up, her look was eager and fixed. There was a
smile on her parted lips.

"She's happy about seeing him," thought Dallas, and was overwhelmed by a
sense of her own guilt.

A diversion soon came in a horrid guise. The road touched the coulee
again, bringing close the giant c