Most of them were the lean and leathern-skinned mates of the
frontiersmen, shapeless and haggard as if toil had drawn from their
bodies all the softness of feminine beauty, as malaria had sucked from
their skins freshness and color. But there were young, pretty ones,
too, who often strolled by, looking sideways from the shelter of
jealous sunbonnets.
This voice was not like theirs. It had a quality David had only heard
a few times in his life--cultivation. Experience would have
characterized it as "a lady voice." David, with none, thought it an
angel's. Very shy, very curious, he came out from the trees ready at
once and forever to worship anyone who could set their words to such
dulcet cadences.
The clearing, green as an emerald and shining with rain, showed the
hood of the wagon and the new, clean tent, white as sails on a summer
sea, against the trees' young bloom. In the middle the fire burned and
beside it stood Leff, a skillet in his hand. He was a curly-headed,
powerful country lad, twenty-four years old, who, two months before,
had come from an Illinois farm to join the expedition.
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