There is no Kuna now; the station-house is gone; the
station-keeper's little children are buried between four stakes on the bare
hill--diphtheria, I think it was. Miss Kitty asked what the stakes were
there for. Tom didn't like to tell her, so he said some traveler had made a
"cache" there of something he couldn't carry with him, and the stakes were
to mark the spot till his return.
"And will nobody disturb the cache?" asked Miss Kitty. I couldn't bear
to hear them. "They are graves," I whispered. "Two little children--the
station-keeper's--all they had." And she asked no more questions.
Mr. Harshaw had got possession of the canteen, and so was able to serve the
maiden, both when she drank and when she held out her rosy fingers to be
sprinkled, he tilting a little water on them slowly--with such provoking
slowness that she chid him; then he let it come in gulps, and she chid
him more, for spattering her shoes. She could play my Lady Disdain very
prettily, only she is something too much in earnest at present for the game
to be a pretty one to watch. I feel like calling her down from her pedestal
of virgin wrath, if only for the sake of us peaceful old folk, who don't
care to be made the stamping-ground for their little differences.
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