ompleting his task he rose and scanned the brush thirty yards away
for a convenient sapling on which to hang his meat.

As he looked, his eye was arrested by a movement in the bushes of
something dun or brown. Without taking his eyes from the spot he stooped
for his rifle, cocked it and advanced slowly.

When he was within thirty feet of the bushes they shook, and the boy
halted, throwing his rifle forward, the butt halfway to his shoulders.
Then, from the shelter of the bushes out stepped a girl.

She was apparently several years younger than the boy, slight, straight,
fair of hair, with clear blue eyes which, however, seemed a little puffy
and reddened. Her face, too, was streaked as with tears, and one sheer
stocking was torn so that the flesh peeped through. She held her arms
straight by her sides, her fists gripped tight. Plainly she was
frightened, but though her mouth quivered a little she looked the boy
straight in the face.

If it had been a grizzly he would have been less surprised. The girl was
a stranger and, moreover, her dress of neat brown linen, her shoes, and
even the sheer, torn stockings, showed that she did not belong in that
neighborhood.

"Hallo!" he said. She gave a little, gasping sigh of relief.

"Why," she said, "you're just a white boy." She spoke with a faint
little lisp, which was really enticing. But her words did not please the
boy who privately considered himself a good deal of a man.

"What did you think I was?" he asked in as gruff a voice as he could
attain.

"I thought you were an In-di-an," she said, pronouncing the word in
syllables; "a growed-up--I mean a grown-up-In-di-an."

Having known Indians all his life the boy found her words unflattering.
"What made you think that?" he queried.

"Because you looked so black and bloody," she told him frankly.

The boy was disgusted. What business had this girl to call him black?
"What's a kid like you doing away out here?" he demanded severely. And
he added wickedly: "Don't you know these woods are full of grizzlies and
cougars and wolves? It's a wonder you weren't eaten alive."

The girl shivered and glanced fearfully back into the gloom of the firs.

"I didn't mean to get lost, really."

"Lost, are you?"

"I was," she said, "but now, of course, you've found me. I'm not afraid
now, because I know you wouldn't let anything hurt me."

At this belated tribute to his manhood the boy's expression softened.

"Well, I guess you