“Uncle Hank!” she gasped, “I had such a dreadful dream, and when I waked, why, you see that ambulance is like a room; it’s got things like doors in it; and I was afraid the door-imp—”
“All right, sister.”
He lifted his head and looked about. She had left her aunt unawakened in the ambulance; she had skirted the form of her sleeping father—and come to him—to him, the friend of a day!
“Here!” whispered the man who had said he was all alone in the world. Swiftly he unwound his blankets, wrapped the small nightgowned figure in them, and settled her cosily, reaching down to get his boots and draw them on.
“But you aren’t going away, Uncle Hank?” quavered the child.
“Not fur,” returned he humorously, as he went over and put more wood on the fire, then seated himself beside the giant cocoon from whose top protruded the small face with the big black eyes. These eyes, under the influence of a good grip on a man’s blue flannel sleeve, gradually lost their wildness. They filmed gently; the long lashes descended halfway, were swept up again with a startled gasp; and after two or three checkings and haltings, Hilda slept. The ranch boss replaced the blankets when from time to time her small, impatient arm flung them off.
Lost in the immensity of night, the camp-fire died down, was replenished, died down again, and showed only winking embers as the east began to blush with a new day.
CHAPTER II
AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART
Southwestward again, all that day—beautifully long for the little girl, wearily lengthened for Miss Valeria who alternately complained of the speed and urged the driver to hurry a little. Pearsall always gave her the same good-humored answer, as though it had been a child fretting at him: “Ponies got forty-odd miles to go, ma’am; have to just hold this same good road pace.”
At noon they stopped and got out for a rest; a “dry camp” he called it, with only water from the canteens to make their coffee. Through the afternoon, the thud-thud of hoofs, the creak and swish of wheels on dry turf, like a monotonous old tune, almost sent Hilda to sleep where she sat beside Uncle Hank on the high seat. Then, when the sky flamed once more red with sunset, suddenly there was living green in front of them, the ambulance swung through an open gate, up a long avenue of young box-elders and black locusts, at the end of which they could see a low stone house, broad, sheltering, hospitable, with its dooryard of Bermuda grass, at the edge of which Pearsall pulled up, got out and helped the others down. Van Brunt, who had sat silent and uncomplaining for hours of heat and weariness, exclaimed: