Isobel thrust herself free from her father’s arms 378 and darted out through the circle of rugged, earnest-faced punchers and cowmen to where Genevieve lay resting with the baby clasped to her bosom.
“Dear! you poor dear!” she murmured, kneeling to stroke the head of the weary young mother.
“I shall soon be rested,” replied Genevieve. “How about Tom? Have you kept watch of him? Has he moved?”
The girl shrank back, unable to face her sister-in-law’s eager look.
“No––I––The fire––it––it disappeared, and I could not see.”
Genevieve smiled, and the reddening dawn lent a trace of color to her pale face. “It was a good sign. He could not have been suffering so much. He must have slept, and the fire died down.”
“Oh! you think that was it?” sighed Isobel. “I feared––”
She did not say what it was she had feared. As she paused Genevieve looked up into her agitated face and asked quickly: “But Lafayette? Is he still sleeping?”
“Yes, where’s Lafe, honey?” inquired Knowles. “We’ll have to roust him out to tell us just what way he came up.”
“Haven’t I told you?” cried Isobel, her head still in a whirl of conflicting emotions. Then, as tersely and quietly as her father would have related it, she told 379 the bald facts of how Ashton had been wakened by the snarl of the wolf, how he had insisted upon going back to help her brother, and how he had gone down into the darkness, the pack and lantern slung over his shoulder.