Page:The trail of the golden horn.djvu/75

Rh and sing the hymns when out in the hills. I was with my father and mother last winter when we came to a band of Indians a long way off. That night they sang, men, women, and children. It was great to hear them.”

“Does the missionary know of this?”

“I believe he does, and it makes him hope that they have not forgotten what he has taught them, and that some day they will go back to The Gap.”

For a while they thus sat and talked, Marion asking many questions, to which the girl readily replied. They were about to resume their journey when Zell gave a slight start, and looked anxiously back over the trail. She listened intently, her body tense and alert.

“What is it?” Marion somewhat anxiously asked.

“I thought I heard a noise, Miss. It sounded like the crack of a driver’s whip or a rifle shot. But I guess I was mistaken. One can hear a long way up here in the hills when the air is so clear.”

“Perhaps there is someone on the trail behind us,” Marion suggested. “Indians travel this way, do they not?”

“Yes, this is one of their favorite trails. But there are no Indians coming from Big Chance to-day.”

Nothing more was said about the matter as they continued on their way. But Marion noticed that Zell was more quiet, and indulged in no loud cracking of the whip. Whenever they had reached the top of a hill or had crossed an inland lake, or a stretch of wild meadow, she noticed that the girl would stop, and look keenly back over the way they had just come. This happened so often that she became uneasy. The intense silence of the land was affecting her, causing her to become nervous. A feeling of impending calamity stole into her soul, which try as she might she could not