"Nell, don't you ever bother your head again about him.

I'll bet they're all men out here.

And I wouldn't be in Harve Riggs's boots for a lot." After that Bo talked of her uncle and his fatal illness, and from that she drifted back to the loved ones at home, now seemingly at the other side of the world, and then she broke down and cried, after which she fell asleep on Helen's shoulder.
But Helen could not have fallen asleep if she had wanted to.
She had always, since she could remember, longed for a moving, active life; and for want of a better idea she had chosen to dream of gipsies.
And now it struck her grimly that, if these first few hours of her advent in the West were forecasts of the future, she was destined to have her longings more than fulfilled.
Presently the stage rolled slower and slower, until it came to a halt.
Then the horses heaved, the harnesses clinked, the men whispered.
Otherwise there was an intense quiet.

She looked out, expecting to find it pitch-dark.

It was black, yet a transparent blackness.