Olive laughed. It was so funny to hear this small boy take the patronizing tone with her that the men of his race used toward all women. She put her arm about him and drew him down on the floor by her. The flickering lights of the fire played on the two dark heads, her hair fine and soft as silk, his stiff and straight as a young colt's mane.
"Of course I want to go back to my friends, Little Brother," Olive sighed. "But let's don't talk of that to-night, I want to be a little bit happy in thinking that I have found something that must once have belonged to my mother."
But the boy would not be persuaded. "We must talk of your getting away to-night, for the time is ready," Carlos declared, in the solemn tone of a young Indian chief making ready for battle. "You know I have been out on the prairies for many days together and no one knew where or for what I had gone. I have wandered in many directions seeking for the home of some white man, for I know that however much the Indian pretends he is in a wilderness, he is always to-day on the border of the white man's land."
"Well, have you found a friend to help me?" Olive demanded fervently.
"I have found no friend," Carlos replied, refusing to be hurried or disturbed. "But I have found an iron trail that stretches across the desert. It must bring you to where the white people dwell."
"An iron trail," Olive repeated wonderingly. "I am afraid I don't know what you mean."
The boy gazed at her with slow, unmoved patience. "It has an iron carriage on it that flies along the trail more swiftly than any horse can run," Carlos explained. "There is great heat and noise and smoke like a prairie fire."
Olive caught the boy's hand in hers. "You mean an engine and a railroad track, don't you, Little Brother?" she queried. "You have seen a train somewhere out on the desert. You will take me to it and somehow I will find people to help me to get back to Rainbow Lodge." Olive flung her arms about Carlos and hugged him as she might have hugged Frieda. She poured out such a flood of questions, that the boy was convinced he was right in his scorn of her sex, but he listened with deep gravity.
"I do not know all things," he replied finally. "Only I have laid all day on the ground near the trail. I know the hour when the iron carriage passes over it. The walk is a long one, but if you will follow me, I will take you there. I will come for you to-night just before the dawn breaks. When you hear an owl hoot, you will know that Carlos is outside your door. You will creep softly, so that we may have several hours before old Laska wakes. I will bring food and the skins of many wild rabbits that I have sewed together in the evenings, that you may not freeze."