A Prairie Infanta

by Eva Wilder Brodhead

Camp life might not be bad for Mr. Keene; but that it would be good for a girl so young and sensitive to every impression as Lola, Jane doubted.

"I got to consider what's best for her," thought Jane, while Keene himself was beginning once more to sympathize with the silent misery in her face.

"I never had no idea you thought so much of Lola!" he exclaimed. "She wasn't the kind of child a stranger'd be apt to get attached to. I hope you don't think I'd do anything mean? That isn't my style! All is, I'm her father, and a father ought to have some say-so. Now aint that true, Miss Combs?"

Jane was thinking. "Would three hundred dollars help you out?" she demanded. "I've got that much. I've been saving it toward Lola's schooling next year."

"What, have you been sending her to pay-school?" Keene looked surprised, and unexpectedly his eyes began to dim. "I'd have been a better man if I'd had any luck," he said, with apparent irrelevance.

Jane made no moral observations. She did not point out that a man's virtue ought not to depend altogether on his income. She said simply, "Will that much do?"

Mr. Keene, controlling his emotion, said it would, and they parted upon the understanding that they should meet at Lynn two days later, for the transference of the fund.

Then Jane plodded wearily back to the pavilion, and mutely watched the cow-ponies rush and buck around the course. She beheld Valentino Cortés, a meteoric vision in white cotton trousers, girdled in crimson, flash by to victory amid the wild "Vivas!" of his compatriots. She saw the burros trot past in their little dog-trot of a race.

But although she essayed a pleased smile at these things, and listened with enforced attention to the speeches and the music, there were present with her foreboding and unrest. For usually the Dauntless pursued no vigorous labor in summer, but merely kept the water out of its slope and "took up" and sold to various smelters such "slack" as it had made during the winter. There would be no royalties coming in to Jane, since no coal would be mined; and presently it would be September, and no money for Lola's school.

So Jane's cares were thickening. Not only did the mine soon enter on its summer inactivity, but worse befell. The mine boss came one day to tell Jane that, because of a certain "roll" in the east entries, it was deemed inadvisable farther to work these levels.