A Girl of the Plains Country

								

set before. It went down in a great glory of painted sky that rushed
out over the floor of the plain so that everything—the ponies, the
ambulance and its little cloud of dust—swam in it.
“It’s getting very late, Mr.—er—Pearsall—isn’t it?” Miss Valeria
asked unhappily from the back seat. “Isn’t there danger of our being
lost if we try to travel in the dark?”
“No, ma’am—not with me—you wouldn’t git lost, day or night,” Uncle
Hank, as the little girl already called him in her own mind, turned
a smiling face over his shoulder to answer. “But we’re most there
now. See them willers where the moon’s a-risin’? That’s our camp.”
“Willers where the moon’s a-risin’.” It jingled in the little head
like poetry; it still sang there as they swung in beside a small
creek that was just a succession of water holes with dry rocks
between, and she was lifted out. For, oh, the moon was rising, and
so beautiful! It came up, a great shield of white in the pink that
had somehow crept around from the sunset in the west; it looked over
the willows and turned them black on one side and silver on the
other; it shone on the little girl very knowingly, as if to say,
“I’m not the same moon at all that I was back in New York—you and I
know that.” And every bit of beauty, whether it was in the sky or on
the earth, everything that was dear and lovely in this new life—and
so much was—she attributed to the new friend whom she was going to
call Uncle Hank forever and ever.
The others had climbed out very gladly; Miss Valeria was established
on the cushions from the seats with the baby beside her. Hilda was
allowed to help—or to think she helped—Uncle Hank, when he came back
from unharnessing, watering and picketing the horses, and set about
getting the evening meal. She ranged as far as the creek bank for
little sticks, and fed them into the side of the fire where the
coffee-pot was. Hank had brought a box from the back of the
ambulance which seemed to hold a whole pantry, and was broiling
steaks on the other side of the fire. Bread was cut, canned milk and
jam and other things opened, butter brought out, with knives, forks
and plates—tin plates, and funny knives and forks and spoons such as
you generally saw in the kitchen; one or two little stew-pots
simmered on their own beds of coals; Hilda looked from them all to
the shadowy earth, the moon-filled sky, quite overwhelmed with the
magic she saw in both. Above them was such a great space of silver
light as she had never seen before; down here, right in the center
of it, burned their single point of fire; she watched its flame go
up and up, saw pieces of it break off to fly away to the big white
stars and the moon. She almost forgot to eat her supper when it was
put out for her on its plate. (Supper was a new word to Hilda. It
was dinner, at home, in the house. It must be supper when you cooked