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"That's a great thing to do," he cried, dazed, and stubbing his foot on a stone stumbled to his knees. The two others fell on Leff. Susan saw the gun ground into the dust under their trampling feet and Leff go down on top of it. Daddy John's tent pole battered at him, and Courant on him, a writhing body, grappled and wrung at his throat.
We want to get off just as soon as we can, and this gentleman," indicating Leff, "says you want to go, too." "We'll start to-morrow morning, if it's clear." "Now, father," giving the arm she held a renewed clutch and sharper shake, "there's our chance. We must go with them." The father's smile would have shown something of deprecation, or even apology, if it had not been all pride and tenderness.
He urged her up with a jerked rein, she made a struggling effort, but fell back, and a groan, singularly human in its pain, burst from her. The wagon behind pounded almost on them, the mules crowding against each other. Daddy John's voice rising in a cracked hail. Courant and Leff came up from the rear, splashing through the river. "What's happened?" said the former.
After silence had reclosed over the rift a puff of smoke rose in the air. They knew now it was Daddy John, fearing they had lost the way, showing them the location of the camp. Spontaneously, without words, they joined hands and started to where the trail of smoke still hung, dissolving to a thread. The fleeing figure of Leff brought no comments to their lips.
They were to go riding, and talking on, their acquaintance ripening gradually and delightfully, while the enormous panorama of the continent unrolled behind them. And it might end in three or four weeks! The Emigrant Trail looked overwhelmingly long when he could only see himself and Leff riding over it, and California lost its color and grew as gray as a line of sea fog.
She did not aspire to a struggling hoard of suitors, but she thought it would be only fair and entirely within the realm of the possible if she had two; most girls had two. Now she felt the secret elation that follows on the dream realized. She did not tell herself that David and Leff were in love with her. She would have regarded all speculations on such a sacred subject as low and unmaidenly.
Daddy John was detailed to take him his meals, and the doctor dressed his wounds and tried to find the cause of his murderous outburst. But Leff was obdurate. He would express no regret for his action, and would give no reason for it. Once when the questioner asked him if he hated David, he said "Yes." But to the succeeding, "Why did he?" he offered no explanation, said he "didn't know why."
He left the camp sunk in the somnolence of its seventh-day rest, Susan not to be seen anywhere, Leff asleep under the wagon, the doctor writing his diary in the shade of the cotton-woods, and Daddy John lying on the grass among the whiteness of the week's wash.
He was the elder by two years and he felt his responsibilities. "They'll do all right. With two more men we'll make a strong enough train." Leff was cook that night, and he set the coffee on and began cutting the bacon.
Her eye left the soap, traveled at a more sprightly speed back to Leff, lit on his face with a questioning intelligence. David called again. "Hurry up. I want to light the fire." Leff took another considered stitch. "I don't know where it is," he answered without looking up. The questioning of Susan's glance became accusative. "It's there beside you on the meal sack," she said. "Throw it to him."
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