"Are you sick, girl?" the man inquired, surprised by Olive's silence.
The girl shook her head. "Oh, no, I am not sick, thank you," Olive answered gently, "but I am very tired. I ran away from an Indian encampment before dawn to-day. Would you mind telling me where this train is going?"
Little by little Olive told the whole history of her strange life to the Irishman, who sat on the box in the freight car and never ceased his whittling for a moment.
"By St. Peter!" he muttered, when Olive finished replying to his last question. "This girl tells a story that might have come out of a poetry or a history book. The funny thing is, her story must be true! Oh, well," he announced to himself, not to Olive, "there is one thing certain. Nobody can ever make up in their heads such all-fired queer things as happen every day."
But the man had not answered Olive's question as to where this train was going. She had not the courage to ask him again.
By and by Olive saw little houses along the road and knew that their train was nearing a small, western town. She got up and touched the Irishman timidly on the arm. "May I get off at the station myself, please?" she begged. "You won't have to put me off."
The man shook his head severely. "No, you are not going to get off yourself," he returned gruffly, "and I ain't going to put you off either. If you can keep on making yourself small, and you are a pretty thin kind of a girl, I am going to take you farther down the road with us. I have an idea this here freight train will run along somewhere near Wolfville in the course of the afternoon. You have had such bad luck in the past, Missie, that maybe your luck has changed. Anyhow, when you butted blindly into this freight car, you found a coach going in just about the way you needed to travel. Don't worry your head any more about what you are to do. I'll put you off at Wolfville, and though it looks a bit cloudy, as though it might mean to blow up a bit of snow, I expect you'll manage to get back to the Ralston Ranch, somehow, before night."
Olive, satisfied that this kind-hearted stranger would look out for her, dozed on, half waking and half sleeping. Neither she nor her new friend knew how exhausted she was. She had passed through several weeks of dreadful hardship, exposure and unhappiness, and now she felt too happy to think or care because her head ached dully, and her legs shook so she could hardly stand on them. She would be home soon with Frieda and Jean and Jack!
Several hours went by. The trainman left the car and attended to his duties. But Olive had entire faith that he would not forget her.
At a little past five o'clock in the afternoon the freight train came to a stop near the little town of Wolfville, which was only a matter of ten miles from Rainbow Ranch. The wind was blowing with a queer, ominous rattling sound and a few flakes of snow were falling.