The second man, who was in hearing distance, had turned away, and was ostentatiously examining the sky and the treetops; the man who had spoken to her joined him, and they said something in a low voice. They turned again and came slowly towards her. She, from some obscure sense of imitation, stared at the treetops and the sky as the second man had done. But the first man now laid his hand kindly on her shoulder and said, “Sit down.”
Then they told her there had been an earthquake so strong that it had thrown down a part of the hillside, including the wagon trail. That a wagon team and driver, such as she had described, had been carried down with it, crushed to fragments, and buried under a hundred feet of rock in the gulch below. A party had gone down to examine, but it would be weeks perhaps before they found it, and she must be prepared for the worst. She looked at them vaguely and with tearless eyes.
“Then ye reckon dad's dead?”
“We fear it.”
“Then wot's a-goin' to become o' me?” she said simply.
They glanced again at each other. “Have you no friends in California?” said the elder man.
“Nary one.”
“What was your father going to do?”
“Dunno. I reckon HE didn't either.”
“You may stay here for the present,” said the elder man meditatively. “Can you milk?”