A few minutes later his contemplations were broken by the sound of horses' feet coming through the Gap. He sat up, interested, and removed his pipe. In another moment as he met the wide-open eyes of two very much startled young ladies, his hat followed. Mr. Crusoe was used to speaking to persons whom he met in his journeyings. It was one of the many joys of the road.
The hearts of Mary and Vivian leaped into their throats. Their eyes, leaving Mr. Crusoe's, saw in one terrifying instant the shirt drying on the quaking-asp, the smoldering fire, the empty bean-can. This man was a tramp! He belonged to that disgusting clan of vagabonds who asked for food at back-doors, and whom one, if frightened into doing it, fed on back stoops as one fed the cat! He, like his fellows, would inspire one to lock all the doors at noonday, and to tell one's neighbors there was a tramp abroad!
"Good-mornin'," said Mr. Crusoe again. "It's a fine day."
This time Mary answered. She did not dare keep silent. The tramp might become angry.
Vivian said nothing. She was waiting for Mary to plan a means of escape. Meanwhile Siwash and his companion, feeling their reins tighten, had stopped and were nibbling at the quaking-asps, quite undisturbed.
"Was you plannin' to ford, young ladies?" he asked politely.
The vanishing flanks of two horses, unceremoniously yanked away from their luncheon and turned toward the prairie, were his only answer. Mr. Crusoe gazed wonderingly into a cloud of dust. Then he felt of his washing on the quaking-asp. It was dry enough. Laying his pipe and hat on the ground, he proceeded to get into the clean shirt.
"Poor little things!" he said from its somewhat damp depths. "They was plum scared of me!"
The shirt on, he did its mate into a bundle, cut a forked stick upon which to sling it, stamped out the last ember of his dying fire, took his hat and pipe, and started north up the creek trail.
Vivian and Mary did not stop their wild gallop until they were well in sight of the nearest house on the prairie. Blue gentians for Miss Wallace, which had been their errand, were quite forgotten. So also was the glory of the morning. Instead, there ever rose before their still startled eyes a black-whiskered, coatless man, smoking the stub of a dirty pipe beneath a cottonwood.