"Well, you are plucky," with an oath. "And you don't even want to scream?"
"Why—no," yet I was confused and bewildered.
"Suppose I dropped you down here and rode off?"
"But you wouldn't," I returned confidently.
He gave me still a tighter squeeze. "No, I might murder the man I hated in hot blood, but I couldn't be cruel to a kitten if it was entrusted to my care."
"Oh, Dan, you could do a worse thing than leave me there on the lonely prairie to perish. But I like to think that you did not dream of it then."
"Now, Chita, take it easy. This little girl isn't any more afraid of the dark than you."
Chita gave an answering whinny. We turned toward the east, where the stars were faintly stealing through the space that seemed tintless at first and then grew bluer. How curiously timid they seemed, how they blossomed out in amber and opal and chrysoprase. Afterward I came to know their names, their path to the summit of glory and their decline, to wander for years, perhaps, and then reign again in new effulgence.
I was almost sorry to come back to sordid civilization, crooked streets and mean houses and dark ways. Taverns and hotels hung out lights; the rest of the town was buried in darkness. Here and there some one had raised a sidewalk; you went up two or three steps and then went down again. But there was often a candle burning in a window.
Father was pacing up and down the path. We had a front fence now to keep out strays, though we could drive them to the pen.