Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/148

142 Abner Blythe dejectedly, as they sat about the camp fire.

Felix was feeding the flame with the sparse fuel, and Anna Blythe, Abner's wife, was sitting on a roll of blankets with her child on her lap. The little boy was ill and lay wailing against her shoulder.

"Don't leave the mare," Felix begged. "A day or two of rest will cure her entirely. There is water here, and grass beside the stream. We could camp two or three days until she can go on."

Abner shook his head wearily.

"We have no time to waste," he declared. "It is August now and we must cross the mountains before the middle of September. We haven't a day, not even an hour, to lose."

Anna Blythe sighed a deep, quivering sigh. Felix knew that she loved the little horse, too, and, so he sometimes thought, she was herself so weary that she often longed to lie down beside the trail and perish as the tired dumb animals did. She had never made complaint before, but to-night, perhaps appalled by the thought of the mountains still to be crossed, she burst out into fierce questioning:

"Abner, why don't we turn back? What is it all for? Can gold, all the gold we could ever gather, repay us for this terrible journey? We are little more than halfway and the worst is still before us. We could go back while there is still time. Why do we go on?"