“Why, it’s over!” she called. “Pa! Pa! The poor soul’s gone!”
At that the other women ran toward her.
“Why, she was breathing a mile or two back,” the one they called Betty said. “I looked in at her and gave her a drink.”
“We didn’t stay in the wagon because it shut out the air,” explained the other. “Zalie here, wanted to stay with her mamma, but we coaxed her not to, for the poor thing needed all the air she could get.”
But the girl was in the wagon now, letting her tears rain on the face of the only one in all the world she ever had called her own.
Betty Bowen began to call to her to come out, but Ma McBirney said: “Just let her cry! Poor little thing—she’s just got to cry.”
Betty Bowen, and her friend Susan Hetter, began to sniffle a little too, but Mary McBirney looking at them made up her mind that they were not caring very much. They looked too dragged out to care about anything. The dust of the road seemed to have got into their very skin; they looked as if they never had slept in a proper bed or dressed in a proper room; and though Mrs. McBirney did not like them, and could hardly keep from drawing away from them, she felt very sorry for them too.
“Where’s the girl’s pa?” she asked them.
“We don’t know,” Betty Bowen said. “Mrs. Knox—that’s the dead woman, ma’am—never said anything about him.”
“Ain’t she got no kin?” asked ma gently.