"You take Mar'lyn," he insisted, "an' th' pistol. Ah c'n git along fine by myself. Charley'll be comin', an' Ah'll hang on t' him. Ah reckon, between us, we'll be O. K. 'Sides, y' know, Ah got a weasel's tail."
The mention of Charley won Dallas to her father's view. He would not be alone all day, for the outcast would surely appear. On the other hand, she longed to have Marylyn with her, where she could shield her from cross words and possible harm. "We'll have Mr. Lounsbury with us coming home," she said.
At that, Marylyn waxed still more eager to remain. And it took some pleading to overcome her reluctance, and to bring about her consent. Finally, however, the two girls drove away.
Before she started the team, Dallas climbed down to say good-by. In all their lives, few caresses had ever passed between father and daughter, and those had been during her babyhood. But now, moved by a common impulse, each reached out at parting to clasp the other. And there were tears in the eyes of both.
As the wagon trundled out of ear-shot, that one of the trio least consulted in the affairs of the shack was hard beset by a temptation: to tell Dallas about Lieutenant Fraser and his earnest, oft-repeated promise of protection. But Marylyn hesitated, afraid to speak—no less afraid of her sister than of her father. She realised that if she mentioned the officer, she would have to admit their meetings. And such a confession would undoubtedly result in an end to those meetings and, perhaps, in severe blaming. Yet—it would also cut short the drive to Clark's. And what might not be awaiting them on that journey? Still, there were only two likely dangers: Indians and the interpreter. "But Mr. Fraser says this upper side of the river's safe," she remembered. As to Matthews, he would not be lingering beside the road to waylay them. Her fears for her own safety were thus argued down.
There was yet her father's safety to consider. Well, her gallant new friend would look to that. "He'll be across again this afternoon," she thought, "and he'll watch the house careful. He couldn't do any more if he knew about the pole." So, her conscience satisfied, she decided to keep her own counsel. That decision cost her abundant grief and penitence in the months to come.
While Marylyn was busy with her troublesome problem, a similar one was running in Dallas' brain, where it called for calculation. Would Matthews threaten the shack that day? It was scarcely probable. Night offered the best hours for an attack. Therefore, the wagon must return before night. But could Ben and Betty make Clark's and the return trip before then? So far, they had never done it. The previous summer, the drive was begun at dawn, when dawn was at three o'clock. "We'll just have to hike along," she said aloud to Marylyn.
Into the coulée slid the wagon, its long tongue in the air, the loose tugs hitting the mules in the hock. When the team had scrambled up the farther side, Dallas put them to a trot by a flick of the black-snake. Then she bent forward over the dashboard, her eyes fixed eagerly on that distant brown blotch at the eastern ridge-top. But Marylyn, as they drew away, looked regretfully backward—to where a clump of tall cottonwoods, shaking their heart-shaped leaves in the wind, dappled a flower-studded stretch below the coulée mouth.
Rod by rod the mules climbed the gently sloping prairie. The morning was perfect, and belied, in its beauty, even a suggestion of lurking harm. The air, crystal-clear and exhilarating, brought far things magically near to the eye. On every hand shimmered the springing grass, now, a pale emerald with the wind brushing it, again, in the still places, a darker green, and yet again—under the ravine's fringing willows, where the deer nibbled—a cool black. Out of it, the meadow-larks showed their good-luck waistcoats and rippled their tunes; out of it, countless wild roses smiled up pinkly to the sun.
But all the loveliness of the new day only mocked at the lonely girls in the wagon. To them, the grey sands of their desert home, the blistering "northers," the brassy skies, were, unconsciously, synonymous of safety and peace. More than once, as they pressed on, the old, red-painted section-house rose before them, a very haven.