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They were on the very peak of the ridge now, and the hill sloped smoothly down before them to the bluff which bounded Quitter Creek. Far down, a tiny black speck in the coulee-bottom, they could see Wooden Shoes riding along the creek-bank, scouting for water. From the way he rode, and from the fact that camp was nowhere in sight, Pink guessed shrewdly that his quest was in vain.

"If she had, I guess she wouldn't have died. I'll bet she never gave her a speck of sage tea, like mommie always does when I'm sick only I ain't ever, thank goodness. I'm just going to ask Jase if Marthy did." On the way to the root cellar, which was dug into the creek-bank well above high-water mark, Billy Louise debated within herself the ethics of speaking to Jase upon a forbidden subject.

Down the muddy creek-bank rushed my victim, plunged through the tumbling waters waist-deep, and, as soon as the opposite shore was reached, a vociferous call was made for Tom, the negro foreman. Horror of horrors! it was my father's voice. In an instant my candle was out, and I was running. I passed unconcernedly through the house and took a seat in the back passage, and awaited events.

The flood also took half a mile of fencing from along the creek-bank, and landed it in a bend, three miles down, on a dummy selection, where it was confiscated. Tom didn't give up he was energetic. He cleared another piece of ground on the siding, and sowed more wheat; it had the rust in it, or the smut and averaged three shillings per bushel.

But the fancies had found utterance for themselves, somehow: in his hatchet-shaped face, even, with its scraggy gray whiskers; in the quick, shrewd smile; in the eyes, keen eyes, but childlike, too. In the very shop out there on the creek-bank you could trace them. So his foolish fancies, as he called them, cropped out.

It appeared to me that they must sweep everything in their path, and for my own preservation I rushed under the creek-bank, but on they came like a tornado, with one old bull in the lead. He held up a second to descend the narrow trail, and when he had got about halfway down I let him have it; I was only a few steps from him and over he tumbled.

Then circling the lick and getting between it and the creek-bank, he flung down the bundle of torches and motioned Enoch back into the deeper shadow. With his own flint and steel, and using a bit of tinder from the leather pouch he carried, he lit one of the resinous torches.

When he rode down the Hog's Back he saw the Happy Family bunched around some object on the creek-bank, and he heard the hysterical screaming of the Kid up in the house, and saw the Old Man limping excitedly up and down the porch. A man less astute than Andy Green would have known that some thing had happened.

He wondered if the peach trees were in bloom now, and whether the white violets were coming up along the creek-bank. How happy and contented Miss Nell always seemed in the country! She had never known before what the outdoor life was like. How he would like to take her hunting for big game up in the Maine woods, or camping out in the Canadian Rockies with old Cherokee Jo for a guide!

Some one at the top of the creek-bank was singing it; some one with an exceedingly small, shaky little voice that was trying to be daring and mocking and indifferent, and that was none of these things but only wistful and a bit pathetic.