ut the character of the cavalcade. At
seven o'clock they entered the first patch of timber and were hidden
from the plain.

On the steep places, where the old squaw was forced to cling to her
saddle, groaning with pain, the kindly Wetherell walked beside her,
easing her down the banks. In crossing the streams he helped her find
the shallowest fording, and in other ways was singularly considerate.
Kelley couldn't have done this, but he saw the value of it.

"It's a hard trip and we've got to make it as easy for the old bird as
we can."

"She's human," retorted Wetherell, "and this ride is probably painful
for her, mentally as well as physically."

"I s'pose it does stir her up some," responded Kelley. "She may balk any
minute and refuse to go. We'd better camp early."

A little later Eugene called out, "She says set tepee here." And Kelley
consented.

Again it was Wetherell who helped her from her saddle and spread his
pack for her to rest upon. He also brought a blanket and covered her as
tenderly as if she were his own grandmother. "She's pretty near all in,"
he said, in palliation of this action. He took a pleasure in seeing her
revive under the influence of hot food.

When she began to talk, Eugene laughingly explained: "She stuck on you.
She say you good man. Your heart big for old Injun woman."

Kelley chuckled. "Keep it up, Andy," he called through the tent. "I
leave all that business to you."

Pogosa's face darkened. She understood the laugh. "Send him away," she
commanded Eugene, all of which made Kelley grin with pleasure.

The whole enterprise now began to take on poetry to Wetherell. The
wilderness, so big, so desolate, so empty to him, was full of memories
to this brown old witch. To her the rushing stream sang long-forgotten
songs of war and the chase. She could hear in its clamor the voices of
friends and lovers. This pathway, so dim and fluctuating, so indefinite
to the white man, led straight into the heroic past for her. Perhaps she
was treading it now, not for the meat and flannel which Kelley had
promised her, but for the pleasure of reliving the past. She was young
when her husband was banished. In these splendid solitudes her brave
young hunter adventured day by day. Here beside one of these glorious
streams her children were born in exile; here they suffered the snows of
winter, the pests of summer; and here they had died one by one, till
only she remained. Then, old and feeble, she had