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 imprudence
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 looking for, isn't it?" she said, half timidly.

"It is," responded Low, in gratified surprise; "but how did you know it?
You're not a botanist, ar