“Well, here we are,” he called when Will and Abbie had caught up with him. “This is yours.” He had a rude paper plan in his hand. “Mine lies over there to the west. Oscar’s is to the north of mine, and Reinmueller’s,—” Gus and Christine had come up in the ridiculous boat wagon. “Reinmueller’s is exactly south of Deal’s.”

Abbie crawled out of the wagon-box. She was stiff and ill and her head ached from the blinding sunlight. Sarah Lutz, with her round rosy cheeks and her beady black eyes, was out of her wagon, too, and over to Abbie’s.

“Well, you’re home.” She was chuckling in her merry way. “This is where you live,—and my good gracious,—you’ve got callers.” She shook hands with Abbie in mock formality. “May I come in and sit a while? Yes, thank you, I’ll take the rocking-chair, Mrs. Deal. Yes, thanks, I’ll have a cup of tea.”

It made Abbie laugh a little, too, the nonsense of it at such a time. And then, “Boo!” Abbie squealed and jumped and ran for the wagon. A little dark, lizard-shaped thing had darted close to her feet with the speed of lightning.

“They’re just swifts,” Will told her, “as harmless as mice.”

“Yes, and just as horrid,” Abbie called back.

They camped in a group for the night. It made quite a party: Will, Abbie and little Mack, the Oscar Lutzes with their three children, Henry and Sarah Lutz with Grandpa Lutz and little Dan, the orphaned nephew, Gus and Christine Reinmueller and their two babies.

The wagons formed a circle, with a single campfire in the center. The sun slipped down behind the rim of the world. One of the men found a spring in the creek bed and brought water. The others fed the horses and led them down to drink. The women folks got supper and washed the plates and cups at the side of the creek bed. The children were put to sleep in the wagons and the older people gathered around the fire. The stars came out, pale yellow flowers in the sky’s own prairie.

A coyote howled. Another answered. It made Abbie think of a night on the journey from Illinois when she was eight, and yet this was different. Then, they had been close to the woods,—the sheltering woods. They had heard all the little night creatures at work, all the tiny rustlings of the timber. But this, paradoxically, was a silent noise. There was complete silence,—save for those distant coyotes. Silence,—save for a faint sound of shivering grass. Silence, so deep, that it roared in its vast vacuum. Silence,—grass,—stars. The group around the fire seemed suddenly too small to be alone in the still vastness, too inadequate and helpless.

What if—? Even as her fear formed itself into thought, she saw through the shadows a figure—and another—and others steal with panther-like tread between the wagons and the creek bed.

CHAPTER X

Abbie could frame no words. She could only reach forth her hand and touch Will’s arm, a nightmare of fear upon her. Will and the other men of the party were also looking toward the shadowy figures in the dark.