Part 3, Chapter 17 Summary

Ella is hired by the Temple family to care for their children while the parents went out. The young girl is pressed into the work by her family, because the Temple's had provided her brother, Fred, the means to hunt and put food on the table. It is night and Ella is preparing her horse, Squaw, for the trip to the Temples' ranch house.

The young girl is most comfortable outside, on her horse. Alone, inside the Temple house, she dreads the encroaching dark. Ella is afraid of the dark. Ella has taken to sitting, quiet and still, in a pink armchair in the Temple's parlor. Ella's anxiety is heightened by the night noises of the farm. Ella counts in order to focus her concentration elsewhere. The noises distract her and she realizes the Temples' horses have taken after her little...