"
Daddy John's answer came back, slow and amused:
"Wait till I get the young feller alone and I'll do some talking."
Laughing, she settled herself in her saddle and dropped her voice for
David's ear:
"I think Daddy John was quite pleased we missed the New York train. It
was a big company, and he couldn't have managed everything the way he
can now. But we'll soon catch it up and then"--she lifted her eyebrows
and smiled with charming malice at the thought of Daddy John's coming
subjugation. "We ought to overtake it in three or four weeks they said
in Independence."
Her companion made no answer. The cheerful conversation had suddenly
taken a depressing turn. Under the spell of Miss Gillespie's loquacity
and black eyes he had quite forgotten that he was only a temporary
escort, to be superseded by an entire ox train, of which even now they
were in pursuit. David was a dreamer, and while the young woman
talked, he had seen them both in diminishing perspective, passing
sociably across the plains, over the mountains, into the desert, to
where California edged with a prismatic gleam the verge of the world.
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