Darkness closed down on the camp, pressing on the edges of the firelight like a curious intruder. There was no wind, and the mound of charring wood sent up a line of smoke straight as a thread, which somewhere aloft widened and dissolved. The stillness of the wilderness brooded close and deep, stifling the noises of the day. When the sounds of suffering from the tent tore the airy veil apart, it shuddered full of the pain, then the torn edges delicately adhered, and it was whole again. Once Lucy came, haggard and tight-lipped, and asked Susan to put on water to heat. Bella was terribly sick, the doctor wouldn't leave her. The other children were nothing to this. But the Emigrant Trail was molding Lucy. She made no complaints, and her nerves were steady as a taut string. It was one of the hazards of the great adventure to be taken as it came. After she had gone, and the iron kettle was balanced on a bed of heat, Susan lay down on her blanket. Fear and loathing were on her. For the first time a shrinking from life and its requirements came coldly over her, for the first time her glad expectancy knew a check, fell back before tremendous things blocking the path. Her dread for her father was submerged in a larger dread--of the future and what it might bring, of what might be expected of her, of pains and perils once so far away they seemed as if she would never reach them, now suddenly close to her, laying a gripping hand on her heart. Her face was toward the camp, and she could not see on the plain behind her a moving shadow bearing down on the fire's glow, visible for miles in that level country. It advanced noiselessly through the swaying bushes, till, entering the limits of the light, it detached itself from the darkness, taking the form of a mounted man followed by a pack animal. The projected rays of red played along the barrel of a rifle held across the saddle, and struck answering gleams from touches of metal on the bridle. So soundless was the approach that Susan heard nothing till a lupine stalk snapped under the horse's hoof. She sat up and turned. Over the horse's ears she saw a long swarthy face framed in hanging hair, and the glint of narrowed eyes looking curiously at her. She leaped to her feet with a smothered cry, Indians in her mind. The man raised a quick hand, and said: "It's all right. It's a white man." He slid off his horse and came toward her. He was so like an Indian, clad in a fringed hunting shirt and leggings, his movements lithe and light, his step noiseless, his skin copper dark, that she stood alert, ready to raise a warning cry. Then coming into the brighter light she saw he was white, with long red hair hanging from the edge of his cap, and light-colored eyes that searched her face with a hard look. He was as wild a figure as any the plains had yet given up, and she drew away looking fearfully at him. "Don't be afraid," he said in a deep voice. "I'm the same kind as you."