More silence, but Scott was not going to be scared out of his good intentions.

“I reckon we can make you pretty comfortable till he comes. We’ve got a mighty pleasant lady running the boarding-house just now and she’ll be glad enough to have another white woman on the place.”

The silence still continuing, he gave up. “Hang it, if she won’t talk, she won’t,” he thought. Then as he turned to tuck in a flying end of robe he saw the girl’s face. “Great guns, she’s asleep—poor kid!”

The end of a far from perfect day had come for Polly Street, and even an uncomfortable seat with a hard back and the joltings of a rough road had failed to keep her awake. She was asleep, sitting up, her 64 head drooping, her body relaxed. In a few seconds she would be leaning comfortably on the broad shoulder next her. Without interrupting the team’s even trot, Scott leaned down, fished another blanket from under the seat and arranged it on the back of the seat between them just in time to receive Polly’s sleepy head, so that she rested half on the blanket, and half on his own steady bulk for the rest of the trip.

64

“Poor youngster, she has had a day of it,” the man said softly, as he arranged the blanket carefully around her. “And, by gum, I’ll bet she hasn’t had a mouthful to eat since noon! Well, women have endurance, I’ll say they have. Built like Angora kittens and with the constitutions of beef critters. Go on, Romeo—I don’t want her fainting with hunger on my hands, she’s mad enough at me now.”

65

CHAPTER V

POLLY ARRIVES

It was midnight when the buckboard stopped in front of the company house where Mrs. Van Zandt and Henry Hard assisted the drowsy Polly out of the wagon, while Scott painstakingly performed the introductions.

“Nothing to eat since noon!” gasped Mrs. Van Zandt, in horror. “What on earth was old lady Morgan thinking of? Mr. Hard, if you’ll throw some more wood into the stove, I’ll put on the percolator and run down to the dining-room for some sandwiches.” She ran off in one direction, while Scott drove the team in another, leaving Hard to do the honors.

“It’s a shame to have things happen this way,” he said. “A thousand times I’ve heard Bob talk about having you come down here, and now that you’ve come, he’s flying in another direction.”

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