"Run along while I try to make the place fit for white people to live in," she said.
It was a comfort to have a woman about the camp. The three men testified to this at supper time as they ate the meal she had prepared in an immaculate kitchen. That evening after Roger had taken Elsa back up to the ranch, Ernest decided he would accompany Gustav into Archer's to get some khaki for Elsa and to endeavor to locate some sulphur dioxide by telegraph. Elsa announced that although she would sleep and take breakfast at the ranch she would spend the day at the Plant as housekeeper.
It was perhaps four o'clock the next afternoon, that Roger, at work in the engine house, saw Felicia half running, half plodding through the sand. Elsa, sewing in the living tent, saw her at the same time.
"What can they mean by letting her come out in this awful heat?" she called to Roger.
Roger made no reply but shouted to Felicia, "Don't run, child! It's too hot!"
Felicia's answer was to quicken her pace. With a sudden sense of apprehension Roger went to meet her. Felicia was sobbing when he reached her. He lifted her in his arms.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
Felicia was almost beyond words. "Dicky—he's—sick again! And—he yelled at me—and slapped me, and he knocked Charley over with his fist. And I ran away—to you—"
Roger's lips stiffened. Elsa had joined them and as he set Felicia down, he said hurriedly, "Take her into the tent. Cool her down gradually. Keep her there till I come."
And he set off as fast as he dared in the burning sun. As he neared the ranch house, he could hear Dick's incoherent shouts and as he ran up the trail, Dick appeared on the porch.