ought to go back to some old camp for food. So presently he trotted
along, his ears up, his nose straight ahead; and I, a savage, depended
upon a creature still a little lower in the order of life, and that
creature proved a faithful servant.

We went on at a swinging walk, or trot, or lope, as the ground said, and
ate up the distance at twice the speed we had used the day before. In a
couple of hours I was close to where she had taken the belt, and so at
last I saw the dog drop his nose and sniff. There were the missing
riches, priceless beyond gold--the little leaden balls, the powder, dry
in its horn, the little rolls of tow, the knife swung at the girdle! I
knelt down there on the sand, I, John Cowles, once civilized and now
heathen, and I raised my frayed and ragged hands toward the Mystery, and
begged that I might be forever free of the great crime of thanklessness.
Then, laughing at the dog, and loping on tireless as when I was a boy, I
ran as though sickness and weakness had never been mine, and presently
came back to the place where I had left her.

She saw me coming. She ran out to meet me, holding out her arms.... I
say she came, holding out her arms to me.

"Sit down here by my side," I commanded her. "I must talk to you. I
will--I will."

"Do not," she implored of me, seeing what was in my mind. "Ah, what
shall I do! You are not fair!"

But I took her hands in mine. "I can endure it no longer," I said. "I
will not endure it."

She looked at me with her eyes wide--looked me full in the face with
such a gaze as I have never seen on any woman's face.

"I love you," I said to her. "I have never loved any one else. I can
never love any one again but you." I say that I, John Cowles, had at
that moment utterly forgotten all of life and all of the world except
this, then and there. "I love you!" I said, over and over again to her.

She pushed away my arm. "They are all the same," she said, as though to
herself.

"Yes, all the same," I said. "There is no man who would not love you,
here or anywhere."

"To how many have you said that?" she asked me, frowning, as though
absorbed, studious, intent on some problem.

"To some," I said to her, honestly. "But it was never thus."

She curled her lip, scorning the truth which she had asked now that she
had it. "And if any other woman were here it would be the same. It is
because I am here, because we are alone, because I am a woman--ah, that
is neither wise no