This idea has entered the young lady's mind, not from one but from several incidents.
Immediately after hearing Lot's voice on the morning of his arrival, her father had come to her and hurriedly whispered, "Not a word to Kruger of our leaving. Flight would now be useless if they mean to stop us."
"But where shall we go?" asks the girl anxiously.
"Nowhere! We are safest here for the present," replies Travenion. Then, seeing astonishment in Erma's mobile face, he continues, "This and the other mining camps are chiefly Gentile. Here we would be protected by the hardy men who have come in from California, Nevada and Colorado. It is in travelling through the farming settlements that our trouble will come to us. I have told him," he indicates by a gesture Mr. Kruger, who is looking to the comfort of his team outside, "that you will remain with me here for some weeks. As you love me and yourself, do not arouse his suspicions."
"You may trust me," whispers his daughter earnestly, for her father's manner is very impressive.
A few minutes after they are all at breakfast together, Kruger greeting Miss Travenion in a more familiar and off-hand manner than he has so far assumed to her, saying, "Wall, Sissy, did your dad look natural as a miner? Stoggie boots aren't quite as nice as patent-leathers, and flannel shirts ain't quite so high-falutin' as b'iled ones, but he's daddy all the same, ain't he?" Then, chuckling at his own remark, he prevents reply by turning to Travenion and saying, "Bishop, she's too likely a gal to let go out agin to the ranks of the unrighteous. You ought to persuade her to take her endowments."
"Pooh!" answers Ralph lightly. "Erma is too devout an Episcopalian for me to hope to convert her." But Miss Travenion notes her father suffers at the mere suggestion that she, whom he loves and honors, should be even mentioned in connection with this sect of which he is bishop and apostle.
The next second Travenion has changed the subject, saying, "I'm glad you've come down, Lot; otherwise I should have had to write to you about our mine."
"Indeed! What's new since we fixed them Gentiles with an injunction?" asks Kruger, easily.
"Come up to the shaft and see," replies Ralph. Then he says to his daughter: "You won't mind a little walk?"