Now she welcomed this unexpected halt. She and Isaiah carried water from the creek and washed a few bits of clothes and hung them to dry. She bathed Cim. She heated water for herself and bathed gratefully. She set Isaiah to gathering fuel for the evening meal, while Cim played in the shade of the clump of scrub oak. She was quite serene. She listened for the sound of horse’s hoofs that would announce Yancey’s triumphant return. She could hear Cim as he played under the trees, crooning to himself some snatch of song that Yancey had taught him. Vaguely she began to wonder if Yancey should not have returned by now. She brushed her hair thoroughly, enjoying the motion, throwing it over her head and bending far forward in that contortionistic attitude required by her task. After she had braided it she decided to leave it in a long thick plait down her back. Audaciously she tied it with a bright red ribbon, smiling to think of what Yancey would say. She tidied the wagon. She was frankly worried now. Nothing could happen. Of course nothing could happen. And in another part of her mind she thought that any one of a dozen dreadful things could happen. Indians. Why not? Some wild things in the woods. Broken bones. A fall from his horse. He might lose his way. Suppose she had to spend the night alone here on the prairie with the two children. Here was the little clump of scrub oaks. The land just beyond showed a series of tiny hillocks that rolled gently away toward the horizon—rolled just enough to conceal whatnot of horror! A head perhaps even now peering craftily over the slope’s edge to see what it could see.
In a sudden panic she stepped out of the wagon with the feeling that she must have her own human things near her—Cim, Isaiah—to talk to. Cim was not there playing with his bits of stone and twigs. He had gone off with Isaiah to gather fuel, though she had forbidden it. Isaiah, his long arms full of dead twigs and small branches, was coming toward the wagon now. Cim was not with him.
“Where’s Cim?”
He dropped his load, looked around. “I lef’ him playin’ by hisself right hyah when Ah go fetch de wood. Ain’ he in de wagon?”
“No. No.”
“Might be he crep’ in de print wagon.”
“Wagon?” She ran to the other wagon, peered inside, called. He was not there.
Together they looked under the wagons, behind the trees. Cim! Cim! Cimarron Cravat, if you are hiding I shall punish you if you don’t come out this minute. A shrill note of terror crept into her voice. She began to run up and down, calling him. She began to scream his name, her voice cracking grotesquely. Cim! Cim! She prayed as she ran, mumblingly. O God, help me find him. O God, don’t let anything happen to him. Dear God, help me find him—Cim! Cim! Cim!
She had heard among pioneer stories that of the McAlastair wagon train crossing the continent toward California in ’49. The Benson party had got separated perhaps a half day’s journey from the front section when scouts brought news of Indians on the trail. Immediately they must break camp and hurry on to join the section ahead for mutual protection. In the midst of the bustle and confusion it was discovered that a child—a boy of three—was missing. The whole party searched at first confidently, then frenziedly, then despairingly. The parents of the missing child had three other small children and another on the way. Every second’s delay meant possible death to every other member of the party. They must push on. They appealed to the mother. “I’ll go on,” she said, and the wagon train wound its dusty way across the plains. The woman sat ashen faced, stony, her eyes fixed in a kind of perpetual horror. She never spoke of the child again.
O God! whimpered Sabra, running this way and that. O God! Oh, Cim! Cim!
She came to a little mound that dipped suddenly and unexpectedly to a draw. And there, in a hollow, she came upon him, seated before a cave in the side of the hill, the front and roof ingeniously timbered to make a log cabin. One might pass within five feet of it and never find it. Four men were seated about the doorstep outside the rude cabin. Cim was perched on the knee of one of them, who was cracking nuts for him. They were laughing and talking and munching nuts and having altogether a delightful time of it. Sabra’s knees suddenly became weak. She was trembling. She stumbled as she ran toward him. Her face worked queerly. The men sprang up, their hands at their hips.
“The man is cracking nuts for me,” remarked Cim, sociably, and not especially glad to see her.
The man on whose knee he sat was a slim young fellow with a sandy mustache and a red handkerchief knotted cowboy fashion around his throat. He put the boy down gently as Sabra came up, and rose with a kind of easy grace.
“You ran away—you—we hunted every—Cim—” she stammered, and burst into tears of mingled anger and relief.
The slim young man seemed the spokesman, though the other three were obviously older than he.
“Why, I’m real sorry you was distressed, ma’am. We was going to bring the boy back safe enough. He wandered down here lookin’ for his pa, he said.” He was standing with one hand resting lightly, tenderly, on Cim’s head, and looking down at Sabra with a smile of utter sweetness. His was the soft-spoken, almost caressing voice of the Southwestern cowman and ranger. At this Sabra’s anger, born of fright, vanished. Besides, he was so young—scarcely more than a boy.
“Well,” she explained,
