"Bring her out now," he said gently. Baby Emma lay weak and listless in her mother's arms, lacking either the strength or the will to hold her head erect. But hope sprang anew in Joe's mind and his heart was not quite so leaden. The child smiled at him, and she had not done that earlier. Joe took his wife and daughter to the couch he had made them and watched Emma lay the baby down. He looked again at her flushed cheeks and dull eyes, and wished mightily that he knew as much about sick babies as he did about driving mules. Emma said, "May we have some fresh water, Joe?" Barbara called, "I'll get it." She had lifted the other three youngsters from the wagon and they were tumbling around in the grass. Joe watched them closely; he had never been here before and he did not know what to expect in such a place. Then the children found the place he had mowed and played there. Joe relaxed. He had just covered that ground himself, and knew there was nothing harmful on it. The youngsters showed no inclination to go elsewhere. The tall grass was as high as their heads and they became entangled in it. This was more to their liking. Tad exclaimed, "Look yonder!" Joe followed his pointing hand. On the far side of the creek a buck deer, his head heavy with grotesque clubs of velvet-covered antlers, was gazing at them. The buck stretched its neck toward them, then stamped its forefeet and flicked a short tail. Tad looked hopefully at Joe. "We need meat, don't we?" Joe shook his head. "Not that much meat. We'll be going on in a couple of days and we can't waste time curing what we don't use." "Shucks!" Tad said dejectedly. "But I'll tell you what you can do," Joe said. "I saw trout in the creek. Suppose you take a hook and line, cut yourself a pole, and see what you can do about bringing in a mess for supper." "You betcha!" Mike at his heels, rifle in his hands, Tad went whooping toward the creek and Joe watched him go. Joe turned back to the tasks at hand, for there was much to be done. But even as he worked he had a curious feeling that this was no routine halt. They had had many different camps under many different conditions, and some were so ordinary that Joe could not remember them at all. Others, such as the one where they'd eaten their first buffalo and the camp where they had forded the creek after he replaced the broken wagon wheel, he remembered clearly. But this one had something that was all its own. Joe tried to pin down the elusive quality it possessed and could not. Perhaps, he thought, it was partly his determination to make it the best and most comfortable stopping place they had yet known. He had a hazy idea that, if he could do everything right and work everything right, baby Emma's fever would depart.