ere,
Wolf! off, villain dog! Don't you see that the creature is killed--no
thanks to you, sirrah?" Good heavens! it was the voice of a woman!

While I was yet quivering under the surprise produced by the silvery
tones, the speaker appeared before my eyes--a girl majestically
beautiful. A face smooth-skinned, with a tinge of golden-brown--cheeks
of purplish red--a nose slightly aquiline, with nostrils of spiral
curve--eyes like those of the Egyptian antelope--a forehead white and
high, above bounded by a band of shining black hair, and surmounted by a
coronet of scarlet plumes--such was the head that I saw rising above the
green frondage of the cotton-woods! The body was yet hidden behind the
leaves; but the girl just then stepped from out the bushes, and her
whole form was exhibited to my view--equally striking and picturesque.
I need not say that it was of perfect shape--bust, body, and limbs all
symmetrical. A face like that described, could not belong to an
ungainly form. When nature designs beauty, it is rare that she does her
work by halves. Unlike the artists of the anatomic school, she makes
the model for herself--hence the perfect correspondence of its parts.
And perhaps fairer form had nature never conceived. The dullest
sculptor might have been inspired by its contemplation.

The costume of the girl corresponded to the cast of her features. About
both there was that air of wild picturesqueness, which we observe in art
paintings of the gipsy, and sometimes in the gipsy herself--for those
sirens of the green lanes have not all disappeared; and, but that saw
the snowy cone of Pike's Peak rising over the crest of the cliff, I
might have fancied myself in the Sierra Asturias, with a beautiful
_gitana_ standing before me. The soft fawn-skin _tilma_, with its gaudy
broidering of beads and stained quills--the fringed skirt and buskined
ankles--the striped Navajo blanket slung scarf-like over her shoulders--
all presented a true gipsy appearance. The plumed circlet upon the head
was more typical of Transatlantic costume; and the rifle carried by a
female hand was still another idiosyncracy of America. It was from that
rifle the report had proceeded, as also the bullet, that had laid low
the bighorn! It was not a _hunter_ then who had killed the game; but
she who stood before me--a huntress--the Wild Huntress.

CHAPTER SEVENTY.

THE WILD HUNTRESS.

No longer was it from fear that I held back; but a