nd spoke to me. I
could not help reflecting how she was reverting, becoming savage. I
thought this--but in my heart I knew she was not savage as myself.

"How are you coming on?" she said. "You sit up nicely--"

"Yes, and can stand, or walk, or ride," I added.

Her brown eyes were turned full on me. In the sunlight I could see the
dark specks in their depths. I could see every shade of tan on her face.

"You are not to be foolish," she said.

"You stand all this nobly," I commented presently.

"Ah, you men--I love you, you men!" She said it suddenly and with
perfect sincerity. "I love you all--you are so strong, so full of the
desire to live, to win. It is wonderful, wonderful! Just look at those
poor boys there--some of them are dying, almost, but they won't whimper.
It is wonderful."

"It is the Plains," I said. "They have simply learned how little a thing
is life."

"Yet it is sweet," she said.

"But for you, I see that you have changed again."

She spread her leather skirt down with her hands, as though to make it
longer, and looked contemplatively at the fringed leggins below.

"You were four different women," I mused, "and now you are another,
quite another."

At this she frowned a bit, and rose. "You are not to talk," she said,
"nor to think that you are well; because you are not. I must go and see
the others."

I lay back against the wagon bed, wondering in which garb she had been
most beautiful--the filmy ball dress and the mocking mask, the gray gown
and veil of the day after, the thin drapery of her hasty flight in the
night, her half conventional costume of the day before--or this, the
garb of some primeval woman. I knew I could never forget her again. The
thought gave me pain, and perhaps this showed on my face, for my eyes
followed her so that presently she turned and came back to me.

"Does the wound hurt you?" she asked. "Are you in pain?"

"Yes, Ellen Meriwether," I said, "I am in pain. I am in very great
pain."

"Oh," she cried, "I am sorry! What can we do? What do you wish? But
perhaps it will not be so bad after a while--it will be over soon."

"No, Ellen Meriwether," I said, "it will not be over soon. It will not
go away at all."

CHAPTER XX

GORDON ORME, MAGICIAN

We lay in our hot camp on the sandy valley for some days, and buried two
more of our men who finally succumbed to their wounds. Gloom sat on us
all, for fever now raged among our wounded. Pests of flies b