“And of course you must get a glimpse of the painted forest. After that you can take a train when you please”—then with a laugh he corrected—“when you get where a train goes.”
“Where could we sleep?” asked Celia.
“Well, you can sleep at the hotel in Gallup—it isn’t an Alvarado but it’ll shelter you. For my own part, if you have a fine night, I’d sleep out!”
CHAPTER XXIII
WITH NOWHERE TO GO BUT OUT
Personally I felt a sort of half-shiver. Sleep out in this land he had been telling us about! Sleep out in the wildest, loneliest country in the world, surrounded by the very Redskins about whom he had earlier in the evening been reeling pretty grewsome stories! He seemed to divine my thoughts. “The Indians are as peaceful as house cats now. Navajos never gave us much trouble except when it came to horse-stealing.”
Then he looked at me in much the way our friend the fire chief had in Rochelle, Illinois.
“You are not afraid, are you?”
“Oh, n-no! I think it’s most enchanting!”
“Are you cold?” asked E. M.