of
prunes. While the water was boiling I came down here after a bear, and
found YOU! My name is Philip Weyman; I haven't even an Indian with me,
and there are three things in the world I'd trade that name for just
now: One is pie, another is doughnuts, and the third--"

She brushed back her hair, and the fear went from her eyes as she
looked at him.

"And the third?" she asked.

"Is the answer to a question," he finished. "How do YOU happen to be
here, six hundred miles from anywhere?"

She stepped out from the rock. And now he saw that she was almost as
tall as himself, and that she was as slim as a reed and as beautifully
poised as the wild narcissus that sways like music to every call of the
wind. She had tucked up her sleeves, baring her round white arms close
to the shoulders, and as she looked steadily at him before answering
his question she flung back the shining masses of her hair and began to
braid it. Her fear for him was entirely gone. She was calm. And there
was something in the manner of her quiet and soul-deep study of him
that held back other words which he might have spoken.

In those few moments she had taken her place in his life. She stood
before him like a goddess, tall and slender and unafraid, her head a
gold-brown aureole, her face filled with a purity, a beauty, and a
STRENGTH that made him look at her speechless, waiting for the sound of
her voice. In her look there was neither boldness nor suspicion. Her
eyes were clear, deep pools of velvety blue that defied him to lie to
her, He felt that under those eyes he could have knelt down upon the
sand and emptied his soul of its secrets for their inspection.

"It is not very strange that I should be here" she said at last. "I
have always lived here. It is my home."

"Yes, I believe that," breathed Philip. "It is the last thing in the
world that one would believe--but I do; I believe it. Something--I
don't know what--told me that you belonged to this world as you stood
there beside the rock. But I don't understand. A thousand miles from a
city--and you! It's unreal. It's almost like the dreams I've been
dreaming during the past eighteen months, and the visions I've seen
during that long, maddening night up on the coast, when for five months
we didn't see a glow of the sun. But--you understand--it's hard to
comprehend."

From her he glanced swiftly over the rocks of the coulee, as if
expecting to see some sign of the home she had spoken of,