"'Mawnin', Ellen!" he drawled. "Y'u shore look good for sore eyes."
"Don't pay me compliments, Colter," replied Ellen. "An' your eyes are not sore."
"Wal, I'm shore sore from fightin' an' ridin' an' layin' out," he said, bluntly.
"Tell me--what's happened," returned Ellen.
"Girl, it's a tolerable long story," replied Colter. "An' we've no time now. Wait till we get to camp."
"Am I to pack my belongin's or leave them heah?" asked Ellen.
"Reckon y'u'd better leave--them heah."
"But if we did not come back--"
"Wal, I reckon it's not likely we'll come--soon," he said, rather evasively.
"Colter, I'll not go off into the woods with just the clothes I have on my back."
"Ellen, we shore got to pack all the grab we can. This shore ain't goin' to be a visit to neighbors. We're shy pack hosses. But y'u make up a bundle of belongin's y'u care for, an' the things y'u'll need bad. We'll throw it on somewhere."
Colter stalked away across the lane, and Ellen found herself dubiously staring at his tall figure. Was it the situation that struck her with a foreboding perplexity or was her intuition steeling her against this man? Ellen could not decide. But she had to go with him. Her prejudice was unreasonable at this portentous moment. And she could not yet feel that she was solely responsible to herself.
When it came to making a small bundle of her belongings she was in a quandary. She discarded this and put in that, and then reversed the order. Next in preciousness to her mother's things were the long-hidden gifts of Jean Isbel. She could part with neither.
While she was selecting and packing this bundle Colter again entered and, without speaking, began to rummage in the corner where her father kept his possessions. This irritated Ellen.
"What do y'u want there?" she demanded.
"Wal, I reckon your dad wants his papers--an' the gold he left heah--an' a change of clothes. Now doesn't he?" returned Colter, coolly.
"Of course. But I supposed y'u would have me pack them."
Colter vouchsafed no reply to this, but deliberately went on rummaging, with little regard for how he scattered things. Ellen turned her back on him. At length, when he left, she went to her father's corner and found that, as far as she was able to see, Colter had taken neither papers nor clothes, but only the gold. Perhaps, however, she had been mistaken, for she had not observed Colter's departure closely enough to know whether or not he carried a package. She missed only the gold. Her father's papers, old and musty, were scattered about, and these she gathered up to slip in her own bundle.