Now sitting, sewing on the log, Susan heard a step on the gravel, and without looking up gave it a moment's attention and knew it was Leff's. She began to sing softly, with an air of abstraction. The steps drew near her, she noted that they lagged as they approached, finally stopped. She gave her work a last, lingering glance and raised her eyes slowly as if politeness warred with disinclination, Leff was standing before her, scowling at her as at an object of especial enmity. He carried a small tin pail full of wild strawberries. She saw it at once, but forebore looking at it, keeping her eyes on his face, up which the red color ran.

"Oh, Leff," she said with careless amiability, "so you've got back."

Leff grunted an agreeing monosyllable and moved the strawberries to a position where they intruded into the conversation like a punctuation mark in the middle of a sentence. Her glance dropped to the pail, and she looked at it saying nothing, amused to thus tease him and covertly note his hopeless and impotent writhings.

He thrust the pail almost against her knee and she was forced to say:

"What fine strawberries, a whole pail full. Can I have one?"

He nodded and she made a careful choice, giving the pail a little shake to stir its contents. Leff glared at the top of her head where her hair was twisted into a rough knot.

"Thank you," she said. "I've found a beauty. You must have been all afternoon getting so many," and she put the strawberry in her mouth and picked up her sewing as though that ended the matter.

Leff stood shifting from foot to foot, hoping that she might extend a helping hand.

"The river's falling," he said at length. "It's gone down two feet. We can cross this evening."

"Then I must hurry and finish my mending."

She evidently was not going to extend so much as the tip of a finger. In his bashful misery his mind worked suddenly and unexpectedly.

"I've got to go and get the horses," he said, and, setting the pail on the log beside her, turned and ran.

But Susan was prepared for this move. It was what she expected.

"Oh, Leff," she called, lazily. "Come back, you've forgotten your strawberries."

And he had to come back, furious and helpless, he had to come back. He had not courage for a word, did not dare even to meet her gaze lifted mildly to his. He snatched up the pail and lurched off and Susan returned to her sewing, smiling to herself.

"He wanted you to take the berries," said Daddy John, who had been watching.

"Did he?" she queried with the raised brows of innocent surprise. "Why didn't he say so?"

"Too bashful!"

"He couldn't expect me to take them unless he offered them."

"I should think you'd have guessed it."

She laughed at this, dropping her sewing and looking at the old man with eyes almost shut.

"Oh, Daddy John," she gurgled. "How clever you are!"

An hour later they began the crossing. The ford of the Vermilion was one of the most difficult between the Kaw and the Platte Valley. After threading the swift, brown current, the trail zigzagged up a clay bank, channeled into deep ruts by the spring's fleet of prairie schooners. It would be a hard pull to get the doctor's wagon up and David rode over with Bess and Ben to double up with the mules. It was late afternoon and the bottom lay below the sunshine steeped in a still transparent light, where every tint had its own pure value. The air was growing cool after a noon of blistering heat and from an unseen backwater frogs had already begun a hoarse, tentative chanting.