"There's nothing to get scairt of, I'll take care of
you. What frightens you, honey?"
She nestled close in his arm with a sigh of half relief.
"I don't know," she laughed, but still with a tremble in her
tones. "It's all so big and lonesome and strange--and I'm so
little."
"There, little girl," he repeated.
They drove on and on. At the end of two hours they stopped. Men
with lanterns dazzled their eyes. The horses were changed, and
so out again into the night where the desert seemed to breathe in
deep, mysterious exhalations like a sleeping beast.
Senor Johnson drove his horses masterfully with his one free
hand. The road did not exist, except to his trained eves. They
seemed to be swimming out, out, into a vapour of night with the
wind of their going steady against their faces.
"Buck," she murmured, "I'm so tired."
He tightened his arm around her and she went to sleep,
half-waking at the ranches where the relays waited, dozing again
as soon as the lanterns dropped behind. And Senor Johnson, alone
with his horses and the solemn stars, drove on, ever on, into the
desert.
By grey of the early summer dawn they arrived. The girl wakened,
descended, smiling uncertainly at Susie O'Toole, blinking
somnolently at her surroundings.
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