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“Nothing but a little old coyote, honey,” he told her. “They don’t ever hurt anybody. He smells our bacon rinds. You must go to bed now, child. If any whiffenpoofs or suchlike cattle trouble you in the night, you come out to Uncle Hank—hear? Uncle Hank’s death on all them kind o’ varmints.”

He saw her to the ambulance, then turned and replenished the fire and, filling his pipe, sat down to await Van Brunt’s return. An hour later the two men were asleep, wrapped in their blankets. There was no sound save the wind in the cottonwoods and the occasional, far, coyote cry, the nearer chirp or stir of a bird. During the earlier part of the night Van Brunt groaned, turned and turned again; roused, sighed, rose to feed the dying fire, sat a while beside it, and went back to his blankets. Then he slept heavily, and for a long time the camp was silent under the moon and stars. In the dark hour just before dawn the old man wakened suddenly and opened his eyes to see Hilda crouching beside him, her hand on his shoulder.