"No, no! My father—I promised him. I can't tell David now. I will later. Don't hold me. Let me go."
The voice of Daddy John came clear from outside. "Missy! Hullo, Missy! Where are you?"
She sent up the old man's name in a quavering cry and the mountain man dropped her arm and stepped back.
She ran past him, and at the mouth of the opening, stopped and leaned on a ledge, getting her breath and trying to control her trembling. Daddy John was coming through the sage, a jack rabbit held up in one hand.
"Here's your supper," he cried jubilant. "Ain't I told you I'd get it?"
She moved forward to meet him, walking slowly. When he saw her face, concern supplanted his triumph.
"We got to get you out of this," he said. "You're as peaked as one of them frontier women in sunbonnets," and he tried to hook a compassionate hand in her arm. But she edged away from him, fearful that he would feel her trembling, and answered:
"It's the heat. It seems to draw the strength all out of me."
"The rabbit'll put some of it back. I'll go and get things started. You sit by David and rest up," and he skurried away to the camp.
She went to David, lying now with opened eyes and hands clasped beneath his head. When her shadow fell across him he turned a brightened face on her.