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milk.
    I said to Jimmy: “Get in there and jump a little, tamp that floor down.” I had learned early in the morningthat he was alright as long as you ordered him about. All day I had been telling him what to do and he had done it. This time he just stood with a far-off look on his face. I thought the dusk was recalling his father to him, but he pointed out to the flats and said: “There’s someone comin’.”
    The clouds were red over the flats and darkness was moving in. About a mile to the south something was making dust, and as we looked it showed itself to be a canvas-top wagon.
    “Jimmy get over by the Indian’s next to those things we gathered.” This time he moved. “And put that box of shells inside your shirt!” I called after him.
    John Bear went inside his hut and closed the door. I put on my shirt and stood in front of the dugout, and I loosened the Colt in my belt.
    We waited without moving for the wagon to arrive. It came on with a bump over the graves. When it reached the town’s edge the team slowed to a walk, a six-horse team, and I wondered what kind of covered wagon needed six horses. They were well used. Slowly down the burnt-out street they came as if the driver was taking in the sight. Then they turned and pulled the creaking rig on toward me.
    “Hollo!” the driver called. He reined in just as I thought he was going to ride on past. He sat up there behind his steaming horses, a stout man, smiling widely under a bushy mustache, he might have been a smith except that he wore a striped shirt with sleeve garters. Turning in his seat he said to someone inside the wagon: “See, was no prairie fire, where is grass for prairie fire?”
    “Well you’re a damn genius, Zar,” a woman’s voicecame from inside, “but I don’t see no Culver City neither.” I saw her come up behind his shoulder and the thing that struck me was she had no bonnet on her head.
    They both looked down at me.
    “Frand,” the man said, “there is mine camp in these hills, am I right?”
    “I’ve heard of one,” I said.
    “Ah hah! I am right. And what has happened here?”
    I said, “Well a man come by preaching hellfire.”
    He laughed and I could see the glint of a gold tooth: “Frand, listen. Two days past I learn is a mining camp westward, a place of business. But westward is big, and yesterday I am lost. Is rain, is dark, and only one strange light is in bottom of sky. You see what I’m telling you? There is good in everything, what for you was a town burning was for me a lamp in the window.” The man shook as he laughed. His jowls shook, his stomach shook.
    The woman said: “Don’t mind Zar, he’s a Russky.”
    “I am,” the man agreed. He jumped down from the seat and I was surprised how short he was. “We make the night here, Adah, and tomorrow to the gold.”
    The woman disappeared in the wagon. The man said to me: “Now frand I have thirsty horses. Is that well yours?”
    “That’s right.”
    “I pay of course. You are a survivor, you will need provisions.”
    “Maybe.”
    He looked at me then as if he was hiding some joke.
    “You like beef? I carry beef.”
    As he spoke something fell off the back of the wagonand then someone jumped off and although my view was obstructed I thought it was a boy. I heard some high voices. At the same time the woman appeared at the front of the wagon and climbed down easily despite a mess of skirts.
    “Adah, horses to water,” the Russian said. “Others make tent in back of dugout. Like in homeland—two houses make willage.”
    Without unhitching the team, the woman Adah pulled them away to the water barrel. When the wagon moved off I saw three figures standing around a square bundle of canvas. This was dusk and it took me a moment to understand that they were all women. One, in pants, whom I had taken for a boy, I saw now to be a Chinese.
    “You see my prize herd, frand?” the Russky poked me in the ribs and chuckled. “Water for beef, is