upon the hand of Mystery.

I do not wish to speak of what followed after that. For me, a, merciful
ignorance came; but what that poor girl must have suffered, hour after
hour, night after night, day after day, alone, without shelter, almost
without food, in such agony of terror as might have been natural even
had her solitary protector been possessed of all his faculties--I say I
cannot dwell upon that, because it makes the cold sweat stand on my
face even now to think of it. So I will say only that one time I awoke.
She told me later that she did not know whether it was two or three days
we had been there thus. She told me that now and then she left me and
crept to the top of the ridge to watch the Indian camp. She saw them
come in from the chase, their horses loaded with meat. Then, as the sun
came out, they went to drying meat, and the squaws began to scrape the
hides. As they had abundant food they did not hunt more than that one
day, and no one rode in our direction. Our horse she kept concealed and
blindfolded until dark, when she allowed him to feed. This morning she
had removed the blanket from his head, because now, as she told me with
exultation, the Indians had broken camp, mounted and driven away, all of
them, far off toward the west. She had cut and dried the remainder of
our antelope meat, taking this hint from what we saw the Indians doing,
and so most of our remaining meat had been saved.

I looked at her now, idly, dully. I saw that her belt was drawn tighter
about a thinner waist. Her face was much thinner and browner, her eyes
more sunken. The white strip of her lower neck was now brick red. I
dared not ask her how she had gotten through the nights, because she had
used the blanket to blindfold the horse. She had hollowed out a place
for my hips to lie more easily, and pulled grasses for my bed. In all
ways thoughtfulness and unselfishness had been hers. As I realized this,
I put my hands over my face and groaned aloud. Then I felt her hand on
my head.

"How did you eat?" I asked her. "You have no fire." "Once I had a fire,"
she said. "I made it with flint and steel as I saw you do. See," she
added, and pointed to a ring of ashes, where there were bits of twigs
and other fuel.

"Now you must eat," she said. "You are like a shadow. See, I have made
you broth."

"Broth?" said I. "How?"

"In your hat," she said. "My father told me how the Indians boil water
with hot stones. I tried it in my own ha