was thinking of money? I meant she was
unfortunate to run away to such a life with a half-breed."

"She's gone out into the mountains with her lover. I don't call that
unfortunate, and I'll bet you she doesn't. She was brave enough to
take her life when it came. She was a gallant girl, that Lucy."

"I suppose that's what you'd think."

And in scorn of more words she gave her attention to her skirt,
spreading its sodden folds to the heat. Courant clasped his hands
behind his head and gazed ruminantly before him.

"Do you know how she'll live, that 'poor Lucy'?"

"Like a squaw."

He was unshaken by her contempt, did not seem to notice it.

"They'll go by ways that wind deep into the mountains. It's wonderful
there, peaks and peaks and peaks, and down the gorges and up over the
passes, the trails go that only the trappers and the Indians know.
They'll pass lakes as smooth as glass and green as this hollow we're
in. You never saw such lakes, everything's reflected in them like a
mirror. And after a while they'll come to the beaver streams and
Zavier'll set his traps. At night they'll sleep under the stars, great
big stars. Did you ever see the stars at night through the branches of
the pine trees? They look like lanterns. It'll seem to be silent, but
the night will be full of noises, the sounds that come in those wild
places, a wolf howling in the distance, the little secret bubbling of
the spring, and the wind in the pine trees. That's a sad sound, as if
it was coming through a dream."

The girl stirred and forgot her skirt. The solemn beauty that his
words conjured up called her from her petty irritation. She looked at
the mountains, her face full of a wistful disquiet.

"And it'll seem as if there was no one else but them in the world. Two
lovers and no one else, between the sunrise and the sunset. There
won't be anybody else to matter, or to look for, or to think about.
Just those two alone, all day by the river where the traps are set and
at night under the blanket in the dark of the trees."

Susan said nothing. For some inexplicable reason her spirits sank and
she felt a bleak loneliness. A sense of insignificance fell heavily
upon her, bearing down her high sufficiency, making her feel that she
was a purposeless spectator on the outside of life. She struggled
against it, struggled back toward cheer and self-assertion, and in her
effort to get back, found herself seeking news of less pic