They camped in the bottom withdrawn from the closer herding of tents.
It was a slow settling, as noiseless as might be, for two at least of
their number knew that the doctor was dying. That afternoon Daddy John
and Courant had seen the shadow of the great change. Whether Susan saw
it they neither knew. She was full of a determined, cold energy,
urging them at once to go among the camps and search for a doctor.
They went in different directions, leaving her sitting by her father's
feet at the raised flap of the tent. Looking back through the
gathering dusk Courant could see her, a dark shape, her body drooping
in relaxed lines. He thought that she knew.
When they came back with the word that there was no doctor to be found,
darkness was closing in. Night came with noises of men and the
twinkling of innumerable lights. The sky, pricked with stars, looked
down on an earth alive with answering gleams, as though a segment of
its spark-set shield had fallen and lay beneath it, winking back
messages in an aerial telegraphy. The fires leaped high or glowed in
smoldering mounds, painting the sides of tents, the flanks of
ruminating animals, the wheels of wagons, the faces of men and women.
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