“It’s over. It’s a little girl. But Lucy’s pretty bad.”
He sat up, fully awake now, and in the stillness of the night heard the cat-like mew of the new-born. The canvas arch of the wagon glowed with a fiery effect from the lighted lanterns within.
“Is she dying?” he said hurriedly.
“No—not’s bad as that. But she’s terribly low. We’ll have to stay here with her till she pulls up some. We can’t move on with her this way.”
He rose and, going to the wagon, looked in through the opened flap. His wife was lying with her eyes closed, waxen pale in the smoky lantern-light. The sight of her shocked him into a sudden spasm of feeling. She had been a fresh and pretty girl of fifteen when he had married her, four years before at St. Louis. He wondered if her father, who had given her to him then, would have known her now. In an excess of careless pity he laid his hand on her and said:
“Well, Lucy, how d’ye feel?”
She shrank from his touch and tried to draw a corner of the blanket, on which her head rested, over her face.
He turned away and walked back to the fire, saying to the second wife:
“I guess she’ll be able to go on to-morrow. She can stay in the wagon all the time. I don’t want to run no risks ’er gittin’ caught in the snows on the Sierra. I guess she’ll pull herself together all right in a few days. I’ve seen her worse ’n that.”