Aloud she said:
“Sonny, I’m going to stay with you all day—and I’m going to wait and see Brand.”
The boy was aghast at this statement, and it was plain from the distress he showed that it was unprecedented.
“If you do,” he said miserably, “maybe Brand will take me away again and—and I’ll never see you any more.”
But Nance had other plans and she shook her head.
That was a lovely day. It was warmer than usual, since summer was stepping down the slopes of the lonely hills, and the strangely assorted trio in Blue Stone Cañon enjoyed it to the full.
They explored far up the narrow defile, the child holding to the girl’s hand and skipping happily, the Collie pacing beside them, a step to the left, two steps to the rear.
They watched the trout waving in the sunlit pools at noon, and waded in a riffle to find barnacles under rocks that Nance might show Sonny the tiny creature which built such a wonderful little house of infinitesimal sticks and mortar.
But as the sun dropped over toward the west and the shadows deepened in the great gorge, Nance began to feel the loneliness, the cold silence, the oppression of the unpeopled wilderness.
The voices seemed to raise their tones, to become menacing. More and more she realized what it must mean to a child left alone in the cañon, and a deep and rising indignation swelled within her.