The passing crowd that had so interested now terrified her. Among all the changing faces not one she knew, not one that more than glanced her way, and was gone on, indifferent. The memory of a time in her early childhood when she had strayed into the canyon and became bewildered flashed through her mind. Was she to suffer again the misery of that dreadful day? But the day had ended in a father’s rescuing arms, and now––
“I remember he told me then that if ever I were lost again I was to keep perfectly still for a time and think over all the things I’d seen by the way. After awhile I might feel sure enough to go slowly back and guide myself by them. But I can’t think here. It’s so noisy and thick with men and women. And I’m getting so hungry. Ephraim said we would have the best dinner his friend could give us. If he’d told me that friend’s name or where he lived. Well, I’ll mind my father in one thing; I’ll keep still. Then if Ephraim should happen to come this way he’d find me sooner. But–he won’t. Something has happened, or he’d never let me out of sight. If I didn’t know the bigness of a city he did and would have taken care.”
So she dismounted and led Scruff back beside the telegraph post, against which the weary animal calmly leaned his shoulder and went to sleep. Jessica threw her arm over the burro’s neck and, standing so, scanned every passing pedestrian and peered into every whirling vehicle.
Something of her first terror left her. She was foolish to think anything harmful could have happened to “Forty-niner” so quickly after she had run away from him. She wished she had called and explained to him, but she had had no time if she would catch up to that gray-coated gentleman. After all they were still in the same city and all she needed was patience.
“That’s what I have so little of, too. Maybe this is a lesson to me. Mother says impatient people always find life harder than the quiet kind. I wonder what she’s doing now! and oh! I’m glad she can’t see me. She’d suffer more than I do. It’s queer how that man, in a fancy coat, with so many brass buttons, keeps looking at me. He’s walked by this place on one side the street or the other ever so many times. I wonder if he owns this post. Maybe it’s his and he doesn’t like us to stand here, yet is too polite to say so. Come, Scruff, let’s walk a little further along. Then he can see we don’t mean to hurt his post.”
Scruff reluctantly roused and moved a pace or two, then went to sleep again. The shadow of a building that had sheltered them from the hot sunshine passed gradually and left them exposed to the full glare from the sky. Both Jessica and the burro were used to heat, however, and did not greatly suffer from it. But this motionless waiting became almost intolerable to active Lady Jess, and the sharpness of her hunger changed into faintness. The sidewalks seemed to be rising up to strike her and her head felt queer; so she pulled the hot Tam from her curls, leaned her cheek against Scruff’s neck, and, to clear her dizzy vision, closed her eyes. Then for a long time knew no more.
A young man sat down to smoke his after-dinner cigar before the window of a clubhouse across the way. Idly observant of the comparatively few persons passing at that hour, his artist eye was caught by the scarlet gleam of Jessica’s cap, fallen against the curbstone.
“Hello! That child has been in that spot for two hours, I think. She was there before I went to dinner and must be dead tired. But she and the burro are picturesque–I’ll sketch them.”
He whipped out notebook and pencil and by a few skillful lines reproduced the pair opposite. But as he glanced toward them, now and then, during this operation, he became convinced that something was amiss with his subject.
“Poor little thing! If she’s waiting for anybody she keeps the baby too long. I’m going over and speak to her. If she’s hungry I’ll send her a sandwich.”