“That’s hardly fair,” said Franklin.  “We are all beginners in this land.”  Yet there was an awkward break in the conversation.

“Providence guides all our ways,” said Mrs. Buford, somewhat irrelevantly, and with her customary sigh.

“Amen!” cried a hearty voice from the kitchen. “’Scuse meh!”

“You will oblige me, captain,” said Buford as they finally rose from the table, “if you will be so good as to drive Miss Beauchamp over to the claim shanty after a while.  I’ll just ride along over on horseback.  I don’t like to put a guest to work, but really I need a little help about that roof.  It has fallen in at one corner, and I presume it ought to be repaired, for the sake of Miss Beauchamp’s conscience when she goes to the Land Office to prove up.”

Franklin assented to this proposition with such eagerness that he blushed as he saw how evident had been his pleasure at this opportunity for a moment’s speech alone with the girl who sat so near but yet so unapproachable.  “I’ll be delighted,” said he.

Mary Ellen said nothing.  The pink spot in her cheek was plainly deeper.  It did not lessen as she stood watching the struggle the two men had in again hitching to the buggy the wild black horse.  Seizing the tug with one hand and the singletree with the other, Franklin fairly swept the obdurate beast off its balance as he forced it to its place at the pole.  His strength was apparent.

“Are you afraid to ride behind that horse?” asked he.

“I don’t think so,” she replied simply, and her uncle helped her in, while Franklin steadied the team.  Yet how Franklin hated the wild black horse now!  All the way across the prairie during the short drive to the shanty the beast gave him plenty to do to keep it inside the harness, and he had no time for a single word.  The girl sat silent at his side, looking straight ahead.  Franklin felt her arm brush his at the jolting of the vehicle now and then.  Her hand, brown and shapely, lay in her lap.  As Franklin gathered the slack of the reins, his own hand approaching hers, it seemed to him that an actual emanation, a subtle warmth, stole from her hand to his, an unspoken appeal from some vital source.  A vague, delicious sense of happiness came over him.  He too fell quite silent.  He guided the horses as though he saw neither them nor aught else between him and some far-off horizon.  At the shanty he helped her down.  Ignorant, he saw not the tale of a bosom heaving, nor read correctly the story of the pink in the cheek.  He believed rather the import of a face turned away, and of features set in a mask of repose.  There had as yet been no word.