-after me?"

She pointed down the narrow valley, her lips parted as she waited for
his answer, her hair rioting over her breast again as she bent toward
him.

"I've come fifteen hundred miles--from that direction," said David,
swinging an arm toward the backward mountains. "I've never been in this
country before. I don't know where the Nest is, or what it is. And I'm
not going to take you back to it unless you want to go. If some one is
coming after you, and you're bound to fight. I'll help you. Will that
bear bite?"

He swung off his pack and put down his gun. For a moment the girl stared
at him with widening eyes. The fear went out of them slowly. Her hand
unclenched, and suddenly she turned to the big grizzly and clasped her
bared arms about the shaggy monster's neck.

"Tara, Tara, it isn't one of them!" she cried. "It isn't one of
them--and we thought it was!"

She whirled on David with a suddenness that took his breath away. It was
like the swift turning of a bird. He had never seen a movement so quick.

"Who are you?" she flung at him, as if she had not already heard his
name. "Why are you here? What business have you going up there--to the
Nest?"

"I don't like that bear," said David dubiously, as the grizzly made a
slow movement toward him.

"Tara won't hurt you," she said. "Not unless you put your hands on me,
and I scream. I've had him ever since he was a baby and he has never
hurt any one yet. But--he will!" Her eyes glowed darkly again, and her
voice had a strange, hard little note in it. "I've been ... training
him," she added. "Tell me--why are you going to the Nest?"

It was a point-blank, determined question, with still a hint of
suspicion in it; and her eyes, as she asked it, were the clearest,
steadiest, bluest eyes he had ever looked into.

He was finding it hard to live up to what he had expected of himself.
Many times he had thought of what he would say when he found this girl,
if he ever did find her; but he had anticipated something a little more
conventional, and had believed that it would be quite the easiest matter
in the world to tell who he was, and why he had come, and to tell it all
convincingly and understandably. He had not, in short, expected the sort
of little person who stood there against her bear--a very difficult
little person to approach easily and with assurance--half woman and half
child, and beautifully wild. She was not disappointing. She was greatly
appealing. Whe