‘No more ’m I,’ he continued, ‘or I don’t s’pose I’d be here yarning a night like this.’
‘It’s a wonder,’ I said, ‘that none of these jolly-looking Fräuleins about here have been able to take your fancy.’
‘Well, to tell the truth,’ he replied, with, however, a rather conscious expression on his face, ‘I think what those poor Fairleighs went through rather scared me of marryin’.
‘But, as I was sayin’, farmin’ didn’t seem to agree with my mate, Bill—that’s him you seen at the claim to-day—spite o’ his past experience, any more’n it did with me. He done the business, by-the-bye, quite [270] ]lately with a bouncin’ gal—Lieschen Hertzog—an’ now stays at home o’ nights.
‘We had a note or two left. We had also a crop o’ potaters an’ some punkins. But no one wanted ’em—wouldn’t buy ’em at any price. In fact, you couldn’t give ’em away in those times.
‘The Fairleighs an’, I think, all of us, were pretty much in the same box. As I said before, it was time somethin’ turned up.
‘It was a wild night. Bill an’ me was lyin’ in our stretchers readin’. About ten o’clock, open flies the door, an’ in bolts Fairleigh drippin’ wet, no hat on, an’ pale as a ghost, an’ stands there like a statue, starin’ at us, without a word.
‘“In God’s name what’s the matter?” I says at last. With that he flaps his hands about, so-fashion, an’ sings out, “Dot’s lost in the ranges!”
‘You may bet that shook us up a bit! You’ve seen the Broken Ranges for yourself, an’ can judge what chance a delicate little kiddy like Dot’d have among them rocks an’ scrub on a worse night than this is.
‘That fool of a sailor-man, if you’ll believe me, an’ his wife had been out sence dark searchin’ for the child, ’stead o’ rousin’ the settlement. Presently, to make matters worse, it appears that he’d lost the woman too—got separated in the scrub, an’ couldn’t find her again. Just by a fluke, while on the Black Hill yonder, he’d caught the glimper o’ sparks from our chimney. He was covered with cuts and bruises an’ goin’ cranky fast when he got to the hut.