His wagon was heaped high with household loot, tins and frying-pans, brooms and a battered graphophone. Something had happened! The wind drowned her words, but her hands challenged his cargo.
“Her tent blew down! She’s over at my house.” He drove abreast of her.
“Her tent!”
That it should be her tent to go! She thought to ask if Mrs. Parrish had been hurt, but Busby did not hear the question.
“I’ve just been over to see what I could save. The Indians would be carrying these away. A woman sets a store by her pots and pans and dishes. The dishes, well, they’re gone, of course; splinters!”
“Then there is no use going there—I’ll go over to your place.”
“Go back by Jones’ ranch,” shouted Busby over his shoulder. “It’s quicker than the road ahorseback.”
Her pagan joy was quenched. Her pace was now a sober one. He had not said if Mrs. Parrish was hurt.
The tidy farm of the Busbys looked wind-blown and dispirited. The young orange trees had torn from their stakes; they curved away from the castigating wind. The alfalfa fields had withstood the blight, and the young willows which fringed the ditch, doubling to the breeze, sprang back like elastic when it passed.
Mrs. Busby came out on the porch to meet her. Innes was tying her horse. “How is she?” she demanded.