XVIII

DOLORIA

With the first glimpse of dawn I arose and faced the East; my arms out,
my palms up, and across them my rifle as a kind of offering to the day.
I do not know why I did this--this spontaneous though semi-pagan
act--except that on my "island," and in my power, slept the girl I
loved; she whom I had stolen from her watchful tribe, whom I would have
as mate. By all the laws of the wilderness she was mine, and I wanted to
tell someone, to challenge the wild, that these arms and hands and this
rifle would protect her till the end.

A thin mist hung low upon the prairie, a faint tint of salmon touched
the sky, and to my lips sprang the words of that inspiring "Salutation
of the Dawn" which found expression in the Orient many thousands of
years ago:

_Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The glory of action,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of beauty:
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today well-lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this Day!_

Then, as the light increased and the mist began to dissolve, I swept the
prairie in all directions for a sign of enemies. Everywhere was peace.

Assured that Efaw Kotee would never find us here I turned and went to my
lean-to--to the place my lean-to had been before we moved it beside the
spring--gathered up my knick-knacks and repaired to the pool, emerging
half an hour later a more presentable man. After this I built a small
fire of buttonwood and set about preparing breakfast.

But this proved to be a perplexing ordeal. Bilkins had packed in a lot
of stuff that he might have manipulated, though to me it was worse than
Greek. Of course, I could cook up coffee and bacon--the kind of meal
Smilax and I were used to--but Sylvia must never be subjected to that!
And it would be insane of me to go out on the prairie after snipe! There
was nothing for it but prepare a dainty concoction from what we had, so,
wishing heartily that Bilkins had come off in the small boat with me, I
dived into our stores on a tour of inspection.

Tea!--who wanted tea for breakfast! A pot of butter!--appropri