Lucy gave an unenthusiastic "Yes." After the first glance backward she had bent over her horse smoothing its mane her face suddenly dyed with a flood of red. CHAPTER II Everybody was glad Zavier had come. He brought a spirit of good cheer into the party which had begun to feel the pressure of the long march behind them, and the still heavier burden that was to come. His gayety was irrepressible, his high spirits unflagging. When the others rode silent in the lifeless hours of the afternoon or drooped in the midday heats, Zavier, a dust-clouded outline on his shaggy pony, lifted up his voice in song. Then the chanted melody of French verses issued from the dust cloud, rising above the rattling of the beaver traps and the creaking of the slow wheels. He had one especial favorite that he was wont to sing when he rode between the two girls. It recounted the adventures of _trois cavalieres_, and had so many verses that Zavier assured them neither he nor any other man had ever arrived at the end of them. Should he go to California with them and sing a verse each day, he thought there would still be some left over to give away when he got there. Susan learned the first two stanzas, and Lucy picked up the air and a few words. When the shadows began to slant and the crisp breath of the mountains came cool on their faces, they sang, first Zavier and Susan, then Lucy joining in in a faint, uncertain treble, and finally from the front of the train the strange man, not turning his head, sitting straight and square, and booming out the burden in his deep baritone: "Dans mon chemin j'ai recontre Trois cavalieres bien montees, L'on, ton laridon danee L'on, ton laridon dai. "Trois cavalieres bien montees L'une a cheval, l'autre a pied L'on, ton, laridon danee L'on ton laridon dai." Zavier furnished another diversion in the monotony of the days, injected into the weary routine, a coloring drop of romance, for, as he himself would have said, he was _diablement epris_ with Lucy. This was regarded as one of the best of Zavier's jokes. He himself laughed at it, and his extravagant compliments and gallantries were well within the pale of the burlesque. Lucy laughed at them, too. The only one that took the matter seriously was Bella. She was not entirely pleased. "Talk about it's being just a joke," she said to Susan in the bedtime hour of confidences. "You can joke too much about some things. Zavier's a man just the same as the others, and Lucy's a nice-looking girl when she gets rested up and the freckles go off. But he's an Indian if he does speak French, and make good money with his beaver trapping." "He's not _all_ Indian," Susan said soothingly. "He's half white. There are only a few Indian things about him, his dark skin and something high and flat about his cheek bones and the way he turns in his toes when he walks."