"I'd rather drive myself. It will give me a chance to visit with Isita."
For several minutes she stared after Joe when he had melted into the shadows. Was it really fear of the coming winter that was driving the Bianes away? Slowly she glanced round her. There in the cañon the darkness was deep as a sea, with only here and there, like a pale face, a gleam of rocky butte facing the west. Not a cricket chirped, not a breeze whispered. In profound silence the earth waited; for what?
Without warning, overwhelmingly, like a great sea risen swiftly in the night, homesickness drowned her. How safe it was back there in that New England village!
Suddenly she shook herself. "I'm as bad as the Bianes," she said to herself, with a shaky laugh, "letting myself get scared by what people say. My job's here, snow or no snow."
But the cruelty of having Isita snatched away from her was not so easily ignored; the happy friendship that she had so patiently worked and waited for, torn up like a flower at the very moment of its blossoming!
But Harry was not the sort who, in the clutch of trouble, weeps or sulks or melts into flabby inertness. She finished her tasks for the night, rose an hour earlier than usual the next morning and went briskly about her work. After milking, she turned the calves into the pasture with the cows so that she need not milk that night, left a load of hay on the wagon in the corral so that the stock could feed out of the rack, and scattered plenty of wheat for the chickens. Her lips were set; there was a steady gaze in her eyes that meant unshaken purpose. Some time, somehow, she would have Isita back for "keeps."
With characteristic kindness she filled a basket with the best she had for the travelers' luncheon—a loaf of bread, some butter, a jar of jam, a cake, some home-made cheese—anything that might make the long journey easier for the two women.
If Isita were going back East she would need some clothes. In Harry's trunk there lay some that she had not worn since she had come to Idaho—clothes for all seasons and occasions, useless to her, yet too good to throw away. Harry selected some that she thought suitable and wrapped them in a bundle.
"Why couldn't I have kept her here?" she said to herself almost fiercely. "I'd have clothed and fed her as long as she needed. We'd have been so happy. At least," she consoled herself, "if they're really going East, Isita will have to go to school. She can tell me everything on our drive to Shoshone."
But Biane had other ideas. "They can tell you not'ing. They know not'ing," he interrupted blandly the moment Harry began to ask questions. "I myself decide to quit her-re. Where do we go?" He raised his eyebrows, smiling fatuously. "Aha! Perhaps even to Sout' Amer-rica. A fine cattle country that. Mebbe you hear from us one day. Eh?" He raised a shoulder, turned to walk away, then glanced back with a wise smile that made poor Harry wish she were a man and could say what she thought.