here, a lot of Indians waylaid a wagon-train here
and killed a girl, and he says that when the moon is just past the full,
something white walks through the grove and wails like a lost soul in
torment. He says sometimes it comes and moans at the corner of the house
where my room is. I just know he was going to do it himself; but I guess
he forgot. So I thought I'd see if he believed his own yarns. I was
going to do it every night till I scared him into sleeping in the house.
I had a perfectly lovely place to disappear into, where he couldn't
trace me if he took to hunting around--only he wouldn't dare." She
pulled down her sleeve very carefully, and then, just as carefully, she
pushed it up again, and took another look.

"My best friend TOLD me I'd get shot if I came to Idaho," she reminded
herself, with a melancholy satisfaction.

"You didn't get shot," Grant contradicted for the sake of drawing more
sparks of temper where temper seemed quaintly out of place, and stared
hard at her drooping profile. "You just got nicely missed; a bullet that
only scrapes off a little skin can't be said to hit. I'd hate to hit a
bear like that."

"I believe you're wishing you HAD killed me! You might at least have
some conscience in the matter, and be sorry you shot a lady. But you're
not. You just wish you had murdered me. You hate girls--you said so. And
I don't know what business it is of yours, if I want to play a joke on
my cousin, or why you had to be sleeping outside, anyway. I've a perfect
right to be a ghost if I choose--and I don't call it nice, or polite, or
gentlemanly for you to chase me all over the place with a gun, trying
to kill me! I'll never speak to you again as long as I live. When I say
that I mean it. I never liked you from the very start, when I first saw
you this afternoon. Now I hate and despise you. I suppose I oughtn't
to expect you to apologize or be sorry because you almost killed me. I
suppose that's just your real nature coming to the surface. Indians love
to hurt and torture people! I shouldn't have expected anything else of
you, I suppose. I made the mistake of treating you like a white man."

"Don't you think you're making another mistake right now?" Grant's whole
attitude changed, as well as his tone. "Aren't you afraid to push the
white man down into the dirt, and raise up--the INDIAN?"

She cast a swift, half-frightened glance up into his face and the eyes
that glowed ominously in the moonlight