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her, “or let’s not go to bed at all. I’ve just realized how fast this tub’s steaming toward New York.”
    "But you'll stay in New York a while, won’t you?” she asked very low as they stepped through the companionway. “I do hope you will.”
    Â 
    Amanda, dozing on Dart’s shoulder in the Ford, heard a dull thump before she saw a long, grayish shape outlined against the darkness of the wash.
    â€œDart!” she whispered.
    He awoke, instantly alert, and simultaneously reached for the flashlight on the seat between them. In the circle of light two little green lamps glared at them, then disappeared.
    â€œBobcat,” said Dart switching off the light. “Too small for lion.”
    â€œOh,” she said. Eyes watching from the darkness. The crouching wilderness filled with invisible life. But to Dart not invisible, not menacing. He understood it.
    â€œDon’t you wish you’d had your gun handy?” she asked, thinking of her father’s delight in hunting expeditions to Canada and duckshooting in Carolina.
    â€œWhy, no,” said Dart, yawning. “I’ve got nothing against that bobcat. There’s no point in killing except for food or because you’re in danger. That’s the law.”
    â€œWhat law?”
    â€œThe law of the wild,” he said, chuckling suddenly. “Live and let live.”
    â€œHow about fishing?”
    â€œFor food only,” he answered and she knew that he was laughing at her, but under the laughter there was an inflexibility.
    â€œI don’t see what’s wrong with hunting and fishing for sport, for just plain fun,” she said crossly. “You’re sometimes so set about things. So—so Spartan.”
    â€œMy Indian blood, no doubt,” said Dart lightly. “Let’s see if the wash is down enough.” He got out of the car with the flashlight and when he came back he started the engine. “We’ll just about make it.”
    The Ford slithered and chugged and pounded through the soft sand of the creek bed, the water lapped the running boards but they pulled through and up the other side of the dip.
    â€œThank goodness, that’s over!” cried Amanda. “On to Lodestone.” She nestled against him again, ashamed of her momentary irritation. “I find I keep thinking about bed in a shameless way. I hope our bed’s decent. Not all straw and lumps like that horror at Lordsburg last night. Beds are so important.”
    â€œOh, I guess it’s okay,” said Dart, watching ahead for the next wash. If
one
of them was running, likely there’d be more down here in the valley, though this he forebore to tell Amanda. “I didn’t notice the bed. Was so damn glad to find us any kind of a shack to live in.”
    And so was I, she thought. And so damn glad when I finally got those letters from him. Their love had fruited and ripened by letter. After they landed he had lingered five days in New York before going back West. And he had, of course, met her family, Mrs. Lawrence and Jean and George. Each morning Dart had appeared at Mrs. Lawrence’s cluttered little apartment on the edge of Beekman Place, and he had hardly concealed his impatience to get out of it again as quickly as possible with Amanda.
    Poor Mama, thought Amanda with impatient affection—trying to crowd the treasures garnered through all the affluent years into a three-room walk-up. Most of the contents of the big Greenwich home had had to be sold, of course, but Mrs. Lawrence had clung to the Chippendales and Bouguereaus, the Chinese teakwood tabourets and the Oriental rugs, and particularly the walnut bedroom suite which she had always shared with her husband.
    Dart, Amanda had soon realized, was extraordinarily indifferent to possessions. Indifferent to many things which she had accepted as the natural fabric of life, like shopping and fine restaurants and theaters.