But the voices outside demanded her. It was the noon halt and Lucy was an important factor in the machinery of the train. Glen's call for her was mingled with the fresh treble of Bob's and Bella's at a farther distance, rose in a plaintive, bovine lowing. She stretched a hand sideways and gripped Susan's skirt.
"I can't go," she gasped in a strangled whisper. "I can't seem to get a hold on myself. Ask Zavier to build the fire and cook. He'll do it, and Courant will help him. And tell the others I'm sick."
Lucy's headache lasted all through the dinner hour, and when the train started she still lay in the back of the doctor's wagon. For once she seemed indifferent to the comfort of her relatives. The clamor that rose about their disorderly fire and unsavory meal came to her ears through the canvas walls, and she remained deaf and unconcerned. When Susan crept in beside her and laid a cool cheek on hers, and asked her if she wanted anything, she said no, she wanted to rest that was all. Daddy John turned his head in profile and said:
"Let her alone, Missy. She's all tuckered out. They've put too much work on her sence her sister took sick. You let her lie there and I'll keep an eye to her."
Then he turned away and spat, as was his wont when thoughtful. He had seen much of the world, and in his way was a wise old man, but he did not guess the secret springs of Lucy's trouble. Women on the trail should be taken care of as his Missy was. Glen McMurdo was the kind of man who let the women take care of him, and between him and the children and the sick woman they'd half killed the girl with work. Daddy John had his opinion of Glen, but like most of his opinions he kept it to himself.
Susan had no desire for talk that afternoon. She wanted to be alone to muse on things. As the train took the road for the second stage, she drew her horse back among the sage and let the file of wagons pass her. She saw hope gleaming in Leff's eye, and killed it with a stony glance, then called to her father that she was going to ride behind. David was hunting in the hills with Courant, Zavier driving in his stead. The little caravan passed her with the dust hovering dense around it and the slouching forms of the pack horses hanging fringe-like in its rear.
They were nearing the end of their passage by the river, shrunk to a clear, wild stream which they came upon and lost as the trail bore westward. Their route lay through an interminable sequence of plains held together by channels of communication that filtered through the gaps in hills. The road was crossed by small streams, chuckling at the bottom of gullies, the sides of which were cracked open like pale, parched lips gasping for air. The limpid transparency of the prospect was blotted by the caravan's moving dust cloud. Beyond this the plain stretched, empty as the sky, a brown butte rising here and there.
Susan heard hoof beats behind her and turned. Courant was riding toward her, his rifle across his saddle. She made a motion of recognition with her hand and turned away thinking how well he matched the surroundings, his buckskins melting into the fawn-colored shading of the earth, his red hair and bronzed face toning with the umber buttes and rustlike stains across the distance. He was of a piece with it, even in its suggestion of an unfeeling, confidant hardness.
He joined her and they paced forward. It was the first time he had ever sought any conversation with her and she was conscious and secretly shy. Heretofore it had been his wont to speak little to her, to sweep an indifferent eye over her which seemed to include her in the unimportant baggage that went to the making of the train. Now, though his manner was brusque, he spoke simply and not discourteously of the hunt in the hills. He had got nothing, but David had killed a black-tailed deer, and possessed by the passion of the chase, was following the tracks of a second. The girl flushed with pleasure.
"David's a very good shot," she said complacently, not at all sure of her statement, for David did not excel in the role of Nimrod. "He kept us supplied with buffalo meat all the way up the Platte."