“Muvvy, sing ‘Dway Wolf.’” And as she paid no heed, but looked at him, white-faced and strange, he again repeated, with his most insinuating and beguiling tricks of eye and smile: 

“Muvvy, sing ‘Dway Wolf’ for Dimmy.”

The child put his head in his mother’s lap, and Alida began, scarce knowing what she did: 

    “’The gray wolves are coming fast over the hill,
        Run fast, little lamb, do not baa, do not bleat,
    For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill,
        And the lambs shall be scattered—­’

“No, no, Jimmy, muvvy cannot sing.  Oh, can’t you feel, child?  Judith, Judith, why were you ever born?”

It was still in the valley.  Had they come to the dead cotton-woods yet?  Had they begun it?  The children shrank from this gray-faced woman whom they did not know and but yet a little while had been their mother.  An awful silence had fallen on the night.  The range-cattle no longer bellowed in their thirst; the hot wind no longer blew from the desert.  A hush not of earth nor air nor the things that were of her ken seemed to have fallen about them, muffing the dark loneliness as by invisible flakes.  The children had crouched close together for comfort.  They feared the little, gray-faced woman who seemed to have stolen into their mother’s place and looked at them with strange eyes.

Jimmy looked at the woman who held him, hoping his mother would come, and he could see them both.  And while he waited he dropped off to sleep; and little Judith, hiding her head on Topeka’s shoulder, that she might not see the look in those accusing eyes, presently dreamed that all was well with her again; and Topeka reflected that if her mother should ask her in the morning whether she had dreamed last night, she would have a fine tale to tell of men riding up, and loud voices, and trying of the door, and father going away with them.  Her mother had questioned her this morning when nothing had happened to warrant it.  Surely she would ask again to-morrow, and Topeka could tell—­she could tell—­all.

Alida looked at her three sleeping children—­his children, and yet they could sleep.  Into her mind came that cry of utter desolation, “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” And God had been deaf to Him, His son, even as He was deaf to her.

The children were sleeping easily.  The hush that had hung like a pall over the valley had not lifted.  Had they done it?  Was it over yet?  She went to the door and listened.  Surely the silence that wrapped the valley was a thing apart.  It was as no other silence that she could remember.  It was still, still, and yet there was vibration to it, like the muffled roar within a shell.  She strained her ears—­was that the sound of horsemen going down the trail?  No, no, it was only the beating of her foolish heart that would not be still, but beat and fluttered and would not let her hear.  Yes, surely, that was the sound of hoofs.  It was over then—­they were going.