“It’s a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard tell.  The citizens tharof consists mainly of coyotes and mountain-lions, with a few rattlers thrown in just to make things neighborly.  This yere place”—­waving his hand towards the arid wastes which night was making more desolate—­“is a summer resort, with modern improvements, compared to it.”

Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate point, and inquired if Mr. Dax knew a family named Yellett living in Lost Trail.

“Never heard of no family living there, excepting the bluff at family life maintained by the wild beasts before referred to.  See here, miss, I ain’t makin’ no play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain’t thinkin’ o’ visitin’ Lost Trail, be you?”

“Perhaps,” said Mary, faintly; and then she, too, talked “goo-goo” to the baby.

VIII

The Rodneys At Home

All that long and never-to-be-forgotten night the stage lurched through the darkness with Mary Carmichael the solitary passenger.  The fat lady had warned Johnnie Dax that he was on no account to replenish Chugg’s flask, if he had the wherewithal for replenishment on the premises.  Moreover, she threatened Dax with the fury of her son should he fail in this particular; and Johnnie, hurt to the quick by the unjust suspicion that he could fail so signally in his duty to a lady, not only refused to replenish the flask, but threatened Chugg with a conditional vengeance in the event of accident befalling the stage.  It was with a partially sobered and much-threatened stage-driver, therefore, that Mary continued her journey after the supper at Johnnie Dax’s, but the knowledge of it brought scant reassurance, and it is doubtful if the red stage ever harbored any one more wakeful than the pale, tired girl who watched all the changes from dark to dawn at the stage window.

Once or twice she caught a glimpse of distant camp-fires burning and knew that some cattle outfit was camped there for the night; and once they drove so close that she could hear the cow-boys’ voices, enriched and mellowed by distance, borne to them on the cool, evening wind.  It gave a sense of security to know that these big-hearted, manly lads were within call, and she watched the dwindling spark of their camp-fires and strained her ears to catch the last note of their singing, with something of the feeling of severed comradeship.  Range cattle, startled from sleep by the stage, scrambled to their feet and bolted headlong in the blind impulse of panic, their horns and the confused massing of their bodies showing in sharp silhouette against the horizon for a moment, then all would settle into quiet again.  There was no moon that night, but the stars were sown broadcast—­softly yellow stars, lighting the darkness with a shaded luster, like lamps veiled in pale-yellow gauze.  The chill electric glitter of the stars, as we know it from between the roofs of high houses, this world of far-flung distance knows not.  There the stars are big and still, like the eyes of a contented woman.