Clark held his peace.

The squaws hovered there for a moment longer, peeping through the
rails. Then Hagar--she of much flesh and more temper--grunted a
word or two, and they turned and plodded on to where the house
stood hidden away in its nest of cool green. For a space they
stood outside the fence, peering warily into the shade,
instinctively cautious in their manner of approaching a strange
place, and detained also by the Indian etiquette which demands
that one wait until invited to enter a strange camp.

After a period of waiting which seemed to old Hagar sufficient,
she pulled her blanket tight across her broad hips, waddled to
the gate, pulled it open with self-conscious assurance, and led
the way soft-footedly around the house to where certain faint
sounds betrayed the presence of Phoebe Hart in her stone milk-
house.

At the top of the short flight of wide stone steps they stopped
and huddled silently, until the black shadow of them warned
Phoebe of their presence. She had lived too long in the West to
seem startled when she suddenly discovered herself watched by
three pair of beady black eyes, so she merely nodded, and laid
down her butter-ladle to shake hands all around.

"How, Hagar? How, Viney? How, Lucy? Heap glad to see you.
Bueno buttermilk--mebbyso you drinkum?"

However diffident they might be when it came to announcing their
arrival, their bashfulness did not extend to accepting offers of