Part 12 (2/2)
”I don't think you make it sound very pleasant,” she said, from returning waves of melancholy. ”It's nothing but hards.h.i.+ps and danger.”
”California's at the end of it, dearie, and they say that's the most beautiful country in the world.”
”It will be a strange country,” she said wistfully, not thinking alone of California.
”Not for long.”
”Do you think we'll ever feel at home in it?”
The question came in a faint voice. Why did California, once the goal of her dreams, now seem an alien land in which she always would be a stranger?
”We're bringing our home with us--carrying some of it on our backs like snails and the rest in our hearts like all pioneers. Soon it will cease being strange, when there are children in it. Where there's a camp fire and a blanket and a child, that's home, Missy.”
He leaned toward her and laid his hand on hers as it rested on the pommel.
”You'll be so happy in it,” he said softly.
A sudden surge of feeling, more poignant than anything she had yet felt, sent a p.r.i.c.king of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away, longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly, some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time she wished that there was another woman in the train. Her instinct told her that men could not understand. Unable to bear her father's glad a.s.surance she said a hasty word about going back and telling Daddy John and wheeled her horse toward the prairie schooner behind them.
Daddy John welcomed her by pus.h.i.+ng up against the roof prop and giving her two thirds of the driver's seat. With her hands clipped between her knees she eyed him sideways.
”What do you think's going to happen?” she said, trying to compose her spirits by teasing him.
”It's going to rain,” he answered.
This was not helpful or suggestive of future sympathy, but at any rate, it was not emotional.
”Now, Daddy John, don't be silly. Would I get off my horse and climb up beside you to ask you about the weather?”
”I don't know what you'd do, Missy, you've got that wild out here on the plains--just like a little buffalo calf.”
He glimpsed obliquely at her, his old face full of whimsical tenderness. She smiled bravely and he saw above the smile, her eyes, untouched by it. He instantly became grave.
”Well, what's goin' to happen?” he asked soberly.
”I'm going to be married.”
He raised his eyebrows and gave a whistle.
”That is somethin'! And which is it?”
”What a question! David, of course. Who else could it be?”
”Well, he's the best,” he spoke slowly, with considering phlegm. ”He's a first-rate boy as far as he goes.”
”I don't think that's a very nice way to speak of him. Can't you say something better?”
The old man looked over the mules' backs for a moment of inward cogitation. He was not surprised at the news but he was surprised at something in his Missy's manner, a lack of the joyfulness, that he, too, had thought an attribute of all intending brides.
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