ened her upper lip and brought out the moist, red curve below.
A sudden recollection of a playmate of his vagabond childhood flashed
across his mind; a wild inspiration of lawlessness, begotten of his past
experience, his solitude, his dictatorial power, and the beauty of the
woman before him, mounted to his brain. He threw his arms passionately
around her, pressed his lips to hers, and with a half-hysterical laugh
drew back and disappeared in the thicket.

Mrs. Dall remained for an instant dazed and stupefied. Then she lifted
her arm mechanically, and with her sleeve wiped her bruised mouth and
the ochre-stain that his paint had left, like blood, upon her cheek. Her
laughing face had become instantly grave, but not from fear; her dark
eyes had clouded, but not entirely with indignation. She suddenly
brought down her hand sharply against her side with a gesture of
discovery.

"That's no Injun!" she said, with prompt decision. The next minute
she plunged back into the trail again, and the dense foliage once more
closed around her. But as she did so the broad, vacant face and the
mutely wondering eyes of Wachita rose, like a placid moon, between the
branches of a tree where they had been hidden, and shone serenely and
impassively after her.

*****

A month elapsed. But it was a month filled with more experience to
Elijah than his past two years of exaltation. In the first few days
following his meeting with Mrs. Dall, he was possessed by terror,
mingled with flashes of desperation, at the remembrance of his rash
imprudence. His recollection of extravagant frontier chivalry to
womankind, and the swift retribution of the insulted husband or
guardian, alternately filled him with abject fear or extravagant
recklessness. At times prepared for flight, even to the desperate
abandonment of himself in a canoe to the waters of the Pacific: at times
he was on the point of inciting his braves to attack the Indian agency
and precipitate the war that he felt would be inevitable. As the days
passed, and there seemed to be no interruption to his friendly relations
with the agency, with that relief a new, subtle joy crept into Elijah's
heart. The image of the agent's wife framed in the leafy screen behind
his lodge, the perfume of her hair and breath mingled with the spicing
of the bay, the brief thrill and tantalization of the stolen kiss still
haunted him. Through his long, shy abstention from society, and his two
years of solitary