She had not heard the
bells, or the trampling, or my holloing. More by my motions than
anything else, she saw that I was inviting her to get in; but she knew
no more than her heels who I was. She went back into the schoolhouse and
got her dinner-basket--lucky or providential act!--and in she climbed.
If I had been Buck Gowdy or Asher Bushyager or the Devil himself, she
would have done the same. She would have thought, of course, that it was
one of the neighbors come for her; and, anyhow, there was nothing
else to do.
As I turned back the rich robes and the jingle of the bells came to her
ears, she started; but I drew her down into the seat, and pulled the
flannel-lined coonskin robe which was under us, up over our laps; I
wrapped the army blanket and the thick buffalo-robe over and under us;
and as I did so, a little black-and-tan terrier came shivering out from
under the coonskin robe and jumped into her lap. I started to put it
down again, but she held it--and as she did she looked at my blue
sleeve, and then up at the mass of wrappings I had over my face. I
thought she snuggled up against me a little closer, then.
4
I turned the horses toward her boarding-place, which was with a new
family who had moved in at the head of the slew, near the pond for which
poor Rowena was making the day of the prairie fire; and in doing so, set
their faces right into the teeth of the gale. It seemed as if it would
strip the scalps from our heads, in spite of all our capes and
comforters and veils.
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