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Why had she pretended not to like Zavier? Why? Why? Susan found her thoughts trailing off into a perspective of questions that brought up against a wall of incomprehension above which Lucy's clear eyes looked at her with baffling secretiveness. It was a warm morning, and the two girls sat in the doctor's wagon. Lucy was knitting one of the everlasting stockings.
When the shadows began to slant and the crisp breath of the mountains came cool on their faces, they sang, first Zavier and Susan, then Lucy joining in in a faint, uncertain treble, and finally from the front of the train the strange man, not turning his head, sitting straight and square, and booming out the burden in his deep baritone: "Dans mon chemin j'ai recontré Trois cavalières bien montées, L'on, ton laridon danée L'on, ton laridon dai.
Before she realized it he had leaned forward and laid his hand on the pommel of her saddle, his face still red and wrinkled with laughter. "That's all right, little lady, but you don't know quite all about us." "I know enough," she answered. "Before you get to California you'll know more. There's a mountain man and a voyageur now in the train. Do you think Zavier and I have squaw wives?"
Both girls wheeled and saw Zavier Leroux ambling after them on his rough-haired pony, the pack horse behind. He waved his hand and shouted across the silence: "I come to go with you as far as South Pass," and then he broke out again into his singing.
In the dark, she clutched at the body against her, felt the beat of pulses distinct through the clothing, the trembling of the hands going down through her flesh and muscle to her heart. "What do you mean? Where?" "I don't know, into the mountains somewhere." "With Zavier? Why?" "Because he wants me to and I must." "But Oh, Lucy " she struggled from the blanket to her knees "Oh, Lucy!"
By the fire that evening Zavier employed himself scraping the dust from a buffalo skull. He wiped the frontal bone clean and white, and when asked why he was expending so much care on a useless relic, shrugged his shoulders and laughed. Then he explained with a jerk of his head in the direction of the vanished Mormons that they used buffalo skulls to write their letters on.
At each of these she halted, hanging from Susan's sustaining grasp, and stubbed her toe accurately and carefully against the protruding root. They would have been silent that evening if it had not been for Zavier. His mood was less merry than usual, but a stream of frontier anecdote and story flowed from him, that held them listening with charmed attention.
"Who was me?" "The woman Lucy don't look at me like that, as if you didn't understand. I saw you, you and Zavier, wrapped in the blanket. You walked out into the moonlight and I saw." Lucy's gaze continued unfaltering and growing harder. Under the freckles she paled, but she stood her ground. "What do you mean? Saw me and Zavier? Where?"
Zavier was an experienced mountain man and his horses were good. Besides, what was the use of bringing them back? They'd chosen each other, they'd taken their own course. It wasn't such a bad lookout for Lucy. Zavier was a first-rate fellow and he'd treat her well. What was the sense of interfering? Bella was furious, and shouted,
"Lucy," she gasped, "what's the matter?" "I want to speak to you. Be quiet." "Has anything happened? Is some one sick?" "No. It's not that. I'm going." "Going? Going where " She was not yet fully awake, filaments of sleep clouded her clearness. "Into the mountains with Zavier." The filaments were brushed away in a rough sweep. But her brain refused to accept the message.
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