“I never thought of your calling me Virginia,” she answered—­and I had no idea what was in her mind.  I saw no reason why I shouldn’t call her by her first name.  “Miss” Royall would have been my name for the wife of a man named Royall.  It was not until long afterward that I found out how different my manners were from those to which she was accustomed.

I never thought of such a thing as varying from my course of conduct on her account; and just as would have been the case if my outfit had been a boat for which time and tide would not wait, I yoked up, after the breakfast was done, and prepared to negotiate the miry crossing of the creek and pull out for Monterey County, which I hoped to reach in time to break some land and plant a small crop.  We did not discuss the matter of her going with me—­I think we both took that for granted.  She stood on a little knoll while I was making ready to start, gazing westward, and when the sound of cracking whips and the shouts of teamsters told of the approach of movers from the East, even though we were some distance off the trail, she crept into the wagon so as to be out of sight.  She had eaten little, and seemed weak and spent; and when we started, I arranged the bed in the wagon for her to lie upon, just as I had done for Doctor Bliven’s woman, and she seemed to hide rather than anything else as she crept into it.  So on we went, the wagon jolting roughly at times, and at times running smoothly enough as we reached dry roads worn smooth by travel.

Sometimes as I looked back, I could see her face with the eyes fixed upon me questioningly; and then she would ask me if I could see any one coming toward us on the road ahead.

“Nobody,” I would say; or, “A covered wagon going the wrong way,” or whatever I saw.  “Don’t be afraid,” I would add; “stand on your rights.  This is a free country.  You’ve got the right to go east or west with any one you choose, and nobody can say anything against it.  And you’ve got a friend now, you know.”

“Is anybody in sight?” she asked again, after a long silence.

I looked far ahead from the top of a swell in the prairie and then back.  I told her that there was no one ahead so far as I could see except teams that we could not overtake, and nobody back of us but outfits even slower than mine.  So she came forward, and I helped her over the back of the seat to a place by my side.  For the first time I could get a good look at her undisturbed—­if a bashful boy like me could be undisturbed journeying over the open prairie with a girl by his side—­a girl altogether in his hands.