And I did.

But in doing it I nearly lost Merridy.

You see, the constant travel and hardship was too much for a prattling baby, and she fell sick from the heat and the dust and the thirst.

I'd been going and going till I was a riding skeleton, till my arms were crooked and dead from holding her, but this new thing frightened me like those men and dogs had never done.

Here was a thing I couldn't hide from nor outride, so I doubled back and came boldly into the watered country again, expecting they would take me, of course, for a runaway man with a babe in his arms isn't hard to identify, but I didn't care.