nto the flames, would be better
and even more expeditiously cooked upon burning coals. Moved in his
practical nature, he was surprised to find this curious creature of
disorganized nerves and useless impulses informed with an intelligence
that did not preclude the welfare of humanity or the existence of a
soul. He respected her for some minutes, until in the midst of a
culinary triumph a big tear dropped and spluttered in the saucepan. But
he forgave the irrelevancy by taking no notice of it, and by doing full
justice to that particular dish.

Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these recently
discovered qualities. It appeared that in the old days of her
wanderings with the circus troupe she had often been forced to
undertake this nomadic housekeeping. But she "despised it," had never
done it since, and always had refused to do it for "him"--the personal
pronoun referring, as Low understood, to her lover Curson. Not caring
to revive these memories further, Low briefly concluded:--

"I don't know what you were, or what you may be, but from what I see of
you you've got all the _sabe_ of a frontierman's wife."

She stopped and looked at him, and then, with an impulse of impudence
that only half concealed a more serious vanity, asked, "Do you think I
might have made a good squaw?"

"I don't know," he replied quietly. "I never saw enough of them to
know."

Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the truth, but
having nothing ready to follow this calm disposal of her curiosity,
relapsed into silence.

The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table equipage in a little
spring near the camp-fire; where, catching sight of her disordered
dress and collar, she rapidly threw her shawl, after the national
fashion, over her shoulder and pinned it quickly. Low _cached_ the
remaining provisions and the few cooking-utensils under the dead embers
and ashes, obliterating all superficial indication of their camp-fire
as deftly and artistically as he had before.

"There isn't the ghost of a chance," he said in explanation, "that
anybody but you or I will set foot here before we come back to supper,
but it's well to be on guard. I'll take you back to the cabin now,
though I bet you could find your way there as well as I can."

On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking a few
tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail brought them
to him.

"That's the kind you're