"Yes, come on," urged Molly; "we'll get something over in 'Teepee.'"
The Kid shook his head, unable to trust himself to speak. Cheyenne Harry turned away a little impatiently.
"I'm sorry," continued Molly with hesitation. "I think you'd like it. But we've had quite a hunt already, haven't we? And we can go another time."
She joined Cheyenne Harry. Peter stood looking first at the Kid, then at the two retreating forms. He was plainly undecided. Molly's gingham dress fluttered for the last time before she turned the corner of a bowlder. Peter suddenly made up his worried mind. The Kid was left alone.
He sat down on a rock, and rested his chin in his hands, and looked away across the valley to the peak of Tom Custer. A tiny white cloud was sailing down the wind. He watched it until, swirling, it dissolved into the currents of air. Far back in the forest of pines a little breeze rustled, faint as a whisper: then it crept nearer, ever waxing in strength, until, with a murmur as of a throng of people, it passed overhead, and vanished with a last sigh in the distance. The Kid listened attentively to the birth and death of the voice. A squirrel directly above him broke into a rattling torrent of chattering rage. The Kid sat, his chin in his hands, looking out over the valley with unseeing eyes, his little rifle resting idly against his knee. The moments passed by, one after the other, distinct, like the ticks of a great clock.
A soft muzzle nosed its way gently between his wrists. He looked down. Peter's homely, gray-whiskered face with the pathetic eyes looked up into his own. The Kid flung both arms about the dog's coarse-furred neck, and burst into a passion of tears.
From the top of the ridge, where she had paused a moment to take breath, Molly saw the whole of this little scene. She suddenly felt very irritated.
That Kid was certainly the most unreasonable of children! Why, she spent three-quarters of her time doing nothing but amuse him. She had got up cheerfully at an unearthly hour, walked several miles without breakfast, followed him uncomplaining through a lot of damp grass and underbrush, and now, because she wouldn't spend the rest of the day with him, he sulked. Forsooth, was she to give up all her friends, her amusements, for the sake of that boy? Molly was most impatient—with the Kid—and she became so preoccupied in pitying herself that she hardly answered Cheyenne Harry's remarks, and was a very poor companion. She deceived herself perfectly; yet in the background of her consciousness was something she did not recognize—something uncomfortable. It was an uneasiness, a heaviness, a slight feeling of guilt for something which she could not specify, quite indefinable, and therefore the more annoying. It made her feel like shaking her shoulders. There seemed no valid reason why she should not be as light-hearted as she had been a few minutes ago, for her reason saw nothing in her conduct to regret. And yet she was uneasy, as though she had done something wrong and was on the point of being found out. She could not understand it, but it was very real, and, because she could see no reason for it, it made her angry, with a sense of injustice.
It was the first manifestation of another phase of heredity—the New England conscience.