“How perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Bo, in delight. “We'll see the stars through the pines.”
“Seems to be clouding over. Wouldn't it be awful if we had a storm?”
“Why, I don't know,” answered Bo, thoughtfully. “It must storm out West.”
Again Helen felt a quality of inevitableness in Bo. It was something that had appeared only practical in the humdrum home life in St. Joseph. All of a sudden Helen received a flash of wondering thought--a thrilling consciousness that she and Bo had begun to develop in a new and wild environment. How strange, and fearful, perhaps, to watch that growth! Bo, being younger, more impressionable, with elemental rather than intellectual instincts, would grow stronger more swiftly. Helen wondered if she could yield to her own leaning to the primitive. But how could anyone with a thoughtful and grasping mind yield that way? It was the savage who did not think.
Helen saw Dale stand erect once more and gaze into the forest.
“Reckon Roy ain't comin',” he soliloquized. “An' that's good.” Then he turned to the girls. “Supper's ready.”
The girls responded with a spirit greater than their activity. And they ate like famished children that had been lost in the woods. Dale attended them with a pleasant light upon his still face.
“To-morrow night we'll have meat,” he said.
“Wild turkey or deer. Maybe both, if you like. But it's well to take wild meat slow. An' turkey--that 'll melt in your mouth.”
“Uummm!” murmured Bo, greedily. “I've heard of wild turkey.”
When they had finished Dale ate his meal, listening to the talk of the girls, and occasionally replying briefly to some query of Bo's. It was twilight when he began to wash the pots and pans, and almost dark by the time his duties appeared ended. Then he replenished the campfire and sat down on a log to gaze into the fire. The girls leaned comfortably propped against the saddles.
“Nell, I'll keel over in a minute,” said Bo. “And I oughtn't--right on such a big supper.”
“I don't see how I can sleep, and I know I can't stay awake,” rejoined Helen.
The girls grew tense and still. Helen could not hear a sound, unless it was a low thud of hoof out in the gloom. The forest seemed sleeping. She knew from Bo's eyes, wide and shining in the camp-fire light, that she, too, had failed to catch whatever it was Dale meant.