"Me and Clara"—the stage had this name painted on the side—"have been
travelling together nigh onto four year. And while there’s times that I
would prefer a greater degree of reciprocity, these yere silent companions
has their advantages. Why, compare Clara to them female blizzards—the two
Mrs. Daxes—and you see Clara’s good p’ints immejit. Yes, miss, the
thirst-quenchers are on me if either one of the Dax boys wouldn’t be glad
to swap, but I’d have to be a heap more locoed than I am now to consent to
the transaction."

At sunset the interminable monotony of the wilderness was broken by a
house of curious architecture, the like of which the tired young traveller
had never seen before, and whose singular candor of design made her doubt
the evidence of her own thoroughly exhausted faculties. The house seemed
to consist of a series of rooms thrown, or rather blown, together by some
force of nature rather than by formal design of builder or carpenter. The
original log-cabin of this composite dwelling looked better built, more
finished, neater of aspect than those they had previously stopped at in
crossing the Desert. Springing from the main building, like claws from a
crustacean, were a series of rooms minus either side walls or flooring.
Indeed, they might easily have passed for porches of more than usually
commodious size had it not been for the beds, bureaus, chairs, stove with
attendant pots, kettles, and supper in the course of preparation. Seen
from any vantage-point in the surrounding country, the effect was that of
an interior on the stage—the background of some homely drama where pioneer
life was being realistically depicted. The _dramatis persona_ who occupied
the centre of the stage when Mary Carmichael drove up was an elderly woman
in a rocking-chair. She was dressed in a faded pink calico gown, limp and
bedraggled, whose color brought out the parchment-like hue and texture of
her skin in merciless contrast. Perhaps because she still harbored
illusions about the perishable quality of her complexion, which gave every