g, level sweep into other hills and the west. "Our
chance is that they're not on my trail after all--it's quite possible."
There was a tranquil unconcern about the figure near him; his own bright
courage caught the meaning of its relaxed lines with a hound of
pleasure. "As you say, it's best to stay here," he said, and as if
thinking aloud--"I believe you must always be right." Then he added, as
if his very soul would speak itself to this wonderful new friend: "We
can't be killed, unless the Lord wills it, and if he does it's right.
Death is only the step into life; I suppose when we know that life, we
will wonder how we could have cared for this one."

Through the gray light the stranger turned his face swiftly, bent toward
Miles, and smiled once again, and the boy thought suddenly of the
martyrdom of St. Stephen, and how those who were looking "saw his face
as it had been the face of an angel."

Across the plain, out of the mist-wreaths, came rushing, scurrying, the
handful of Indian braves. Pale light streamed now from the east,
filtering over a hushed world. Miles faced across the plain, stood close
to the tall stranger whose shape, as the dawn touched it, seemed to rise
beyond the boy's slight figure wonderfully large and high. There was a
sense of unending power, of alertness, of great, easy movement about
him; one might have looked at him, and looking away again, have said
that wings were folded about him. But Miles did not see him. His eyes
were on the fast-nearing, galloping ponies, each with its load of
filthy, cruel savagery. This was his death coming; there was disgust,
but not dread in the thought for the boy. In a few minutes he should be
fighting hopelessly, fiercely against this froth of a lower world; in a
few minutes after that he should be lying here still--for he meant to be
killed; he had that planned. They should not take him--a wave of sick
repulsion at that thought shook him. Nearer, nearer, right on his track
came the riders pell-mell. He could hear their weird, horrible cries;
now he could see gleaming through the dimness the huge headdress of the
foremost, the white coronet of feathers, almost the stripes of paint on
the fierce face.

Suddenly a feeling that he knew well caught him, and he laughed. It was
the possession that had held in him in every action which he had so far
been in. It lifted his high-strung spirit into an atmosphere where there
was no dread and no disgust, only a keen rap