The young girl thought no better of Leff than he did. The thought of being viewed in her abandonment by the despised youth made her scramble into the back of the wagon where she lay concealed on a pile of sacks. In the forward opening where the canvas was drawn in a circle round a segment of sky, Daddy John's figure fitted like a picture in a circular frame. As a step paused at the wheel she saw him lean forward and heard his rough tones. "Yes, she's here, asleep in the back of the wagon." Then Leff's voice, surprised: "Asleep? Why, it ain't an hour since we started." "Well, can't she go to sleep in the morning if she wants? Don't you go to sleep every Sunday under the wagon?" "Yes, but that's afternoon." "Mebbe, but everybody's not as slow as you at getting at what they want." This appeared to put Susan's retirement in a light that gave rise to pondering. There was a pause, then came the young man's heavy footsteps slouching back to his wagon. Daddy John settled down on the seat. "I'm almighty glad it weren't him, Missy," he said, over his shoulder. "I'd 'a' known then why you cried." CHAPTER V Late the same day Leff, who had been riding on the bluffs, came down to report a large train a few miles ahead of them. It was undoubtedly the long-looked-for New York Company. The news was as a tonic to their slackened energies. A cheering excitement ran through the train. There was stir and loud talking. Its contagion lifted Susan's spirits and with her father she rode on in advance, straining her eyes against the glare of the glittering river. Men and women, who daily crowded by them unnoted on city streets, now loomed in the perspective as objective points of avid interest. No party Susan had ever been to called forth such hopeful anticipation. To see her fellows, to talk with women over trivial things, to demand and give out the human sympathies she wanted and that had lain withering within herself, drew her from the gloom under which she had lain weeping in the back of Daddy John's wagon. They were nearing the Forks of the Platte where the air was dryly transparent and sound carried far. While yet the encamped train was a congeries of broken white dots on the river's edge, they could hear the bark of a dog and then singing, a thin thread of melody sent aloft by a woman's voice. It was like a handclasp across space. Drawing nearer the sounds of men and life reached forward to meet them--laughter, the neighing of horses, the high, broken cry of a child. They felt as if they were returning to a home they had left and that sometimes, in the stillness of the night or when vision lost itself in the vague distances, they still longed for.