doorway with her fingers doubled into tight little fists, and stared out
over the great, treeless, unpeopled land which had swallowed her alive. She
tried to think--and then, in another moment, she was trying not to think.

Glancing quickly over her shoulder, to make sure Manley was too busy to
follow her, she went off the porch and stood uncertain in the parched
inclosure which was the front yard.

"I may as well see it all, and be done," she whispered, and went stealthily
around the corner of the house, holding up her skirts as she had done in
the kitchen. There was a dim path beaten in the wiry grass--a path which
started at the kitchen door and wound away up the coulee. She followed it.
Undoubtedly it would lead her to the spring; beyond that she refused to let
her thoughts travel.

In five minutes--for she went slowly--she stopped beside a stock-trampled
pool of water and yellow mud. A few steps farther on, a barrel had been
sunk in the ground at the base of a huge gray rock; a barrel which filled
slowly and spilled the overflow into the mud. There was also a trough, and
there was a barrier made of poles and barbed wire to keep the cattle from
the barrel. One crawled between two wires, it would seem, to dip up water
for the house. There were no trees--not real trees. There were some
chokecherry bushes higher than her head, and there were other bushes that
did not look particularly enlivening.

With a smile of bitter amusement, she tucked her skirts tightly around her,
crept through the fence, and filled a chipped granite cup which stood upon
a rock ledge, and drank slowly. Then she laughed aloud.

"The water really _is_ cold," she said. "Anywhere else it would be