She was getting supper when she looked up and saw them, gave a low
exclamation, and ran to the outskirts of the camp. Here she stood
watching, heard Daddy John lounge up behind her and, turning, caught
his hand.
"Is she there?" she said in an eager whisper.
"I can't see her."
They both scrutinized the figures, small as toy horsemen, loping over
the leathern distance.
"Ain't there only four?" he said. "You can see better'n I."
"Yes," she cried. "Four. I can count them. She isn't there. Oh, I'm
glad!"
The old man looked surprised:
"Glad! Why?"
"I don't know. Oh, don't tell, Daddy John, but I wanted her to get
away. I don't know why, I suppose it's very wicked. But--but--it
seemed so--so--as if she was a slave--so unfair to drag her away from
her own life and make her lead some one else's."
Lucy gone, lost as by shipwreck in the gulfs and windings of the
mountains, was a fact that had to be accepted. The train moved on, for
on the Emigrant Trail there was no leisure for fruitless repining.
Only immediate happenings could fill the minds of wanderers struggling
across the world, their energies matched against its primal forces.
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