He patted her
with his free hand, the coffee-pot in the other, thinking her agitation
merely an expression of fatigue, with no more knowledge of its complex
provocation than he had of the mighty throes that had once shaken the
blighted land on which they stood.
David was better, much better, he declared, and proved it by helping
clear the camp and pack the wagon for the night march. He was kneeling
by Daddy John, who was folding the blankets, when he said suddenly:
"If I hadn't got water I think I'd have died last night."
The old man, stopped in his folding to turn a hardening face on him.
"Water?" he said. "How'd you get it?"
"Susan did. I told her I couldn't stand it, and she went down twice to
the wagon and brought it to me. I was at the end of my rope."
Daddy John said nothing. His ideas were readjusting themselves to a
new point of view. When they were established his Missy was back upon
her pedestal, a taller one than ever before, and David was once and for
all in the dust at its feet.
"There's no one like Susan," the lover went on, now with returning
forces, anxious to give the mead of praise where it was due.
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