"Supposing Nat Wolfe should ride up with us," said Mrs. Wright.
"Well?" queried the young girl, bending the full blaze of her eyes on her aunt. Hers was one of those reserved and queenly natures that could not endure even the well-meaning raillery of others on matters about which maidens are reticent.
"Oh, don't look at me so, and I'll never mention him again," laughed Mrs. Wright; and yet, in despite of her coolness, Elizabeth could not control the deepening crimson in her own cheeks.
Many times, that day, her eyes had searched the plain, hoping to see Golden Arrow speeding through the distance, his steed bounding lightly and his yellow hair streaming on the wind, as she had seen him yesterday.
But when the weary afternoon had rolled to the east, and the company had camped, in the burning splendor of sunset, on the yellow desert, with only a half-hidden stream and a little line of stunted trees to make that spot more desirable than another, she still sat in the wagon, and looked through the molten air with a sad and searching look, in vain—Golden Arrow did not come.
While they were at supper, a party of vagabond Indians, some on mules and some on foot, came straggling about the camp, begging for hay for their mules and corn for themselves. The very sight of them took away Elizabeth's appetite: she sat, holding her little cousin, and feeding her, but she could not partake of the meal herself. Although assured that these dirty and miserable savages were neither able or disposed to do harm, that theft was the worst to be dreaded from them, she would not meet their snaky eyes for the world; she had an innate abhorrence of the race, such as most persons feel for serpents.
As she sat thus, inwardly shuddering, and looking at nothing but the child and the cup of biscuit and coffee she was holding for her, little Minnie cried out and hid her face in her bosom.
Elizabeth felt the shadow of some one between herself and the light, and raising her eyes met those of an Indian fixed intently upon her. He continued to gaze upon her, without speaking or asking for any thing she might have to bestow. He was tall and straight, but otherwise one of the most repulsive of the party, filthy beyond description and ragged in the few articles of tawdry finery he had contrived to obtain for his personal adornment. A bandage of cloth, originally white, passed across his upper lip and around his head; it was designed to conceal a wound which he had once received from an enemy in battle, and which his pride would never permit the eyes of his brothers to behold. Those silent, glittering eyes burned into the brain of the girl, so that she involuntarily closed her own, and when she overcame the feeling sufficient to again look up, the Indian was gone. She saw him mixing with others of his party, gesticulating, begging, eating the food given; but she drew a long breath of relief when the whole pack slunk off in the twilight, vanishing into the wide darkness of the plains.
The emigrants were not very well pleased with their present camping-ground; it was unprotected by any bluff, or even river-ledge, from the searching winds which were certain to blow at night, and which were all the more uncomfortable because of the heat and glare of the day. When this wind was high, it mocked the protection even of the covered wagons, whistling through every cranny, making the children shiver and the men wakeful, despite of blankets.
On this night, as if aware of the confusion it would cause to the adventurous intruders upon solitudes it had long held possession of as its own, it came along more wrathfully than they had thus far experienced it. By midnight it had roused itself into a hurricane. Accustomed to the wild, unbroken sweep of these mighty plains, it rushed on, holding its sublime revel as heedless of the little encampment as of a feather in its path. Elizabeth was wide awake, sitting up in the wagon listening to the awful music, trembling with fear and cold; Mrs. Wright was wide awake, too; and her husband was leaning over the sleeping children as if he could protect them from the threatening storm.