"Ah! those tracks in the black mud and that face above the ledge!"

"It is true," said the squaw, "and not a dream. The track of the white man
was there, and the moon was in the sky, as you say."

"Ah!" and the evidently unwelcome truth made her clench her fingers
together despairingly; she had hoped so that it was a dream. The truth of
it banished her lethargy, made her think as nothing else had. "Ah! it was
so, then; and the face--the face was real, was--"

"I saw no face," said the squaw.

"But I did--yes, I did," she muttered. "I saw it like the face of a white
devil!"

Then she checked herself and glanced at the Indian woman, whose dark,
heavy face appeared so stupid. Still, one never could tell by the looks of
an Indian how much or how little he knows of the thing you want to know;
and after a moment's scrutiny, the girl asked:

"Did you learn more of the tracks?--learn who the white man was that made
them?"

The woman shook her head.

"You sick--much sick," she explained. "All time Dan he say: 'Stay here by
white girl's bed. Never leave.' So I not get out again, and the rain come
wash all track away."

"Does Dan know?--did you tell him?"

"No, Dan never ask--never talk to me, only say, 'Take care 'Tana,' that
all."

The girl asked no more, but lay there on her couch, filled with dry moss
and covered with skins of the mountain wolf. Her eyes closed as though she
were asleep; but the squaw knew better, and after a little, she said
doubtfully:

"Maybe Akkomi know."

"Akkomi!" and the eyes opened wide and slant. "That is so. I should have
remembered. But oh, all the thoughts in my brain have been so muddled. You
have heard something, then? Tell me."

"Not much--only little," answered the squaw. "That night--late that night,
a white stranger reached Akkomi's tent, to sleep. No one else of the tribe
got to see him, so the word is. Kawaka heard on the river, and it was that
night."

"And then? Where did the stranger go?"

The squaw shook her head.

"Me not know. Kawaka not hear. But I thought of the track. Now many white
men make tracks, and one no matter."

"Akkomi," and the thoughts of the girl went back to the very first she
could remember of her recovery; and always, each day, the face of Akkomi
had been near her. He had not talked, but would look at her a little while
with his sharp, bead-like eyes, and then betake himself to the sunshine
outside her door, where he would smoke placidly for