"It seems to be all over me—the marmalade, I mean—but I don't know where the pot is, and I am most horribly sticky!" cried Ducky, who was a most fastidious little maiden.
"Where is your fist? I will suck it clean for you," volunteered Don, with such an air of brotherly self-sacrifice that Nealie burst out laughing, which was much better for her than the tears she longed to shed, and which had been smarting under her eyelids only a minute before.
For a few minutes there was great competition between Don and Billykins for the privilege of sucking Ducky's fists clean of marmalade, and, the comical side of the picture presenting itself to the little girl, she laughed as much as Nealie; then Sylvia joined in, and at length they were all making the best of things, groping in the dark for lumps of sugar and dabs of marmalade, until they lighted on some that had uncomfortably mixed itself up with the pepper, when a chorus of ohs! and ahs! sounded from the group of explorers, and everyone immediately decided that they had had enough marmalade for the present.
The cattle had all gone, and the night was entirely silent again, when Rupert said anxiously: "I wonder where Rockefeller has gone? We shall be in a pretty bad case if anything happens to the old horse."
"I will go in search of him when morning comes; the worst that could happen would be that he would stampede with the cattle, and we shall have the men in charge of the droves coming past presently," said Rumple, who had made a sort of shelter for himself and Rupert from the wreckage of the canvas which had been draped round the wagon.
"Perhaps the horse has not been upset at all by the panic of the cattle. It is not as if it had been a lot of horses rushing across the encampment in the middle of the night," said Sylvia, who had succeeded in making Ducky so warm and comfortable that the little girl was falling off to sleep again, although the rest of them were very wide-awake indeed.
"I wish that I knew what the time is, but I don't know where to find the matches, and it is too dark to see the face of my watch," said Rupert. He was feeling the situation rather keenly, because he could do so very little to help the others, when, by right of his position as eldest of the family, he ought to have done so much.
"Don't worry about the time, dear; try to get a little sleep if you can. You will need it so badly when the morning comes," said Nealie, moving a little because she found that she was sitting in the frying pan, and she remembered that it had only been rubbed with a bit of paper after being used for frying bacon on the day before yesterday.
"I vote that we all go to sleep, seeing that we can do no good by keeping awake. We can't even sort up this mess of marmalade and pepper," said Rumple, whose tongue was still on fire from the last lick of marmalade which had been so liberally mixed with pepper.
"Someone is coming. I wonder if it is one of the cattle men?" said Rupert, thrusting his head farther out from the canvas and getting the full benefit of the cold wind which came howling and moaning out of the south.