hours and watch the
restless Anglo-Saxon in his struggle to make the earth yield up its
riches.

Each day Akkomi had been there, and she had not once aroused herself to
question why; but she would.

Rising, she passed out and looked right and left; but no blanketed brave
met her gaze. Only Kawaka, the husband of Flap-Jacks, worked about the
canoes by the water. Then she entered Harris' cabin, where the sight of
his helpless form, and his welcoming smile, made her halt, and drop down
on the rug beside him. She had forgotten him so much of late, and she
touched his hand remorsefully.

"I feel as if I had just got awake, Joe," she said, and stretched out her
arms, as though to drive away the last vestige of sleep. "Do you know how
that feels? To lie for days, stupid as a chilled snake, and then, all at
once, to feel the sun creeping around where you are and warming you until
you begin to wonder how you could have slept so many days away. Well, just
now I feel almost well again. I did not think I would get well; I did not
care. All the days I lay in there I wished they would just let me be, and
throw their medicines in the creek. I think, Joe, that there are times
when people should be allowed to die, when they grow tired--tired away
down in their hearts; so tired that they don't want to take up the old
tussle of living again. It is so much easier to die then than when a
person is happy, and--and has some one to like them, and--"

She left the sentence unfinished, but he nodded a perfect understanding of
her thoughts.

"Yes, you have felt like that, too, I suppose," she continued, after a
little. "But now, Joe, they tell me we are rich--you and Dan and I--so
rich we ought to be happy, all of us. Are we?"

He only smiled at her, and glanced at the cozy furnishing of his rude
cabin. Like 'Tana's, it had been given a complete going over by Overton,
and rugs and robes did much to soften its crude wood-work. It had all the
luxury obtainable in that district, though even yet the doors were but
heavy skins.

She noticed the look but shook her head.

"Thick rugs and soft pillows don't make troubles lighter," she said, with
conviction; and then: "Maybe Dan is happy. He--he must be. All he thinks
of now is the gold ore."

She spoke so wistfully, and her own eyes looked so far, far from happy,
that the face of the man was filled with longing to comfort her--the
little girl who had tramped so long on a lone trail--how lonely