Chapter XXV - Cleaving Only Unto Her.

She made no great outcry. I saw her bend her face forward into her hands.

"What shall we do?" she asked at length.

"I do not know," said I to her soberly; "but since there is water here and a little shelter, it is my belief that we ought to stop here for the night."

She looked out across the gray monotony that surrounded us, toward the horizon now grown implacable and ominous. Her eyes were wide, and evidently she was pondering matters in her mind. At last she turned to me and held out her hands for me to assist her in dismounting.

"John Cowles, of Virginia," she said, "I am sorry we are lost."

I could make no answer, save to vow silently that if I lived she must be returned safely to her home, unhurt body and soul. I dared not ponder on conventions in a case so desperate as I knew ours yet might be. Silently I unsaddled the horse and hobbled it securely as I might with the bridle rein. Then I spread the saddle blanket for her to sit upon, and hurried about for Plains fuel. Water we drank from my hat, and were somewhat refreshed. Now we had food and water. We needed fire. But this, when I came to fumble in my pockets, seemed at first impossible, for I found not a match.

"I was afraid of that," she said, catching the meaning of my look. "What shall we do? We shall starve!"

"Not in the least," said I, stoutly. "We are good Indians enough to make a fire, I hope."

In my sheath was a heavy hunting knife; and now, searching about us on the side of the coulee bank, I found several flints, hard and white. Then I tore out a bit of my coat lining and moistened it a trifle, and saturated it with powder from my flask, rubbed in until it all was dry. This niter-soaked fabric I thought might serve as tinder for the spark. So then I struck flint and steel, and got the strange spark, hidden in the cold stone ages and ages there on the Plains; and presently the spark was a little flame, and then a good fire, and so we were more comfortable.

We roasted meat now, flat on the coals, the best we might, and so we ate, with no salt to aid us. The girl became a trifle more cheerful, though still distant and quiet. If I rose to leave the fire for an instant, I saw her eyes following me all the time. I knew her fears, though she did not complain.

Man is the most needful of all the animals, albeit the most resourceful. We needed shelter, and we had none. Night came on. The great gray wolves, haunters of the buffalo herds, roared their wild salute to us, savage enough to strike terror to any woman's soul. The girl edged close to me as the dark came down. We spoke but little. Our dangers had not yet made us other than conventional.

Now, worst of all, the dark bank of cloud arose and blotted out all the map of the stars. The sun scarce had sunk before a cold breath, silent, with no motion in its coming, swept across or settled down upon the Plains. The little grasses no longer stirred in the wind. The temperature mysteriously fell more and more, until it was cold, very cold. And those pale, heatless flames, icy as serpent tongues played along the darkening heavens, and mocked at us who craved warmth and shelter. I felt my own body shiver. She looked at me startled.

"You are cold," said she.

"No," I answered, "only angry because I am so weak." We sat silent for very long intervals. At length she raised her hand and pointed.

Even as dusk sank upon us, all the lower sky went black. An advancing roar came upon our ears. And then a blinding wave of rain drove across the surface of the earth, wiping out the day, beating down with remorseless strength and volume as though it would smother and drown us twain in its deluge—us, the last two human creatures of the world!

It caught us, that wave of damp and darkness, and rolled over us and crushed us down as we cowered. I caught up the blanket from the ground and pulled it around the girl's shoulders. I drew her tight to me as I lay with my own back to the storm, and pulled the saddle over her head, with this and my own body keeping out the tempest from her as much as I could. There was no other fence for her, and but for this she might perhaps have died; I do not know. I felt her strain at my arms first, then settle back and sink her head under the saddle flap and cower close like some little schoolfellow, all the curves of her body craving shelter, comfort, warmth. She shivered terribly. I heard her gasp and sob. Ah, how I pitied her that hour!

Colonel Meriweather Expresses His Thanks For The Rescue Of His Daughter

Colonel Meriweather Expresses His Thanks For The Rescue Of His Daughter

Orme Testifies That He Heard John And The Colonel Quarreling

Orme Testifies That He Heard John And The Colonel Quarreling

Our fire was gone at the first sweep of the storm, which raged thunderously by, with heavy feet, over the echoing floor of the world. There came other fires, such blazes and explosions of pale balls of electricity as I had never dreamed might be, with these detonations of pent-up elemental wrath such as I never conceived might have existence under any sky. Night, death, storm, the strength of the elements, all the primeval factors of the world and life were upon us, testing us, seeking to destroy us, beating upon us, freezing, choking, blinding us, leaving us scarce animate.

Yet not destroying us. Still, somewhere under the huddle and draggle of it all burned on the human soul. The steel in my belt was cold, but it had held its fire. The ice in the flints about us held fire also in its depths. Fire was in our bodies, the fire of life—indomitable, yearning—in our two bodies. So that which made the storm test us and try us and seek to slay us, must perhaps have smiled grimly as it howled on and at length disappeared, baffled by the final success of the immutable and imperishable scheme. The fire in our two bodies still was there.

As the rain lessened, and the cold increased, I knew that rigors would soon come upon us. "We must walk," I said. "You shiver, you freeze."

"You tremble," she said. "You are cold. You are very cold."

"Walk, or we die," I gasped; and so I led her at last lower down the side of the ravine, where the wind was not so strong.

"We must run," I said, "or we shall die." I staggered as I ran. With all my soul I challenged my weakness, summoning to my aid that reserve of strength I had always known each hour in my life. Strangely I felt—how I cannot explain—that she must be saved, that she was I. Strange phrases ran through my brain. I remembered only one, "Cleaving only unto her"; and this, in my weakened frame of body and mind, I could not separate from my stern prayer to my own strength, once so ready, now so strangely departed from me.

We ran as we might, back and forward on the slippery mud, scrambled up and down, panting, until at length our hearts began to beat more quickly, and the love of life came back strongly, and the unknown, mysterious fire deep down somewhere, inscrutable, elemental, began to flicker up once more, and we were saved—saved, we two savages, we two primitive human beings, the only ones left alive after the deluge which had flooded all the earth—left alive to begin the world all over again.

Chapter XXVI - In Sickness And In Health

To the delirious or the perishing man, time has no measuring. I do not know how we spent the night, or how long it was. Some time it became morning, if morning might be called this gray and cheerless lifting of the gloom, revealing to us the sodden landscape, overcast with still drizzling skies which blotted out each ray of sunlight.

Search what way I might, I could find nothing to relieve our plight. I knew that Auberry would before this time have gone back to follow our trail, perhaps starting after us even before night had approached; but now the rain had blotted out all manner of trails, so rescue from that source was not to be expected. Not even we ourselves could tell where we had wandered, nor could we, using the best of our wits as we then had them, do more than vaguely guess where our fellow travelers by that time might be. Neither did we know distance nor direction of any settlement. What geography we thought right was altogether wrong. The desert, the wilderness, had us in its grip.

We sat, draggled and weary, at the shoulder of the little ravine, haggard and worn by the long strain. Her skin garments, again wet through, clung tight to her figure, uncomfortably. Now and again I could see a tremor running through her body from the chill. Yet as I looked at her I could not withhold my homage to her spirit. She was a splendid creature, so my soul swore to me, thoroughbred as any in all the world. Her chin was high, not drawn down in defeat. I caught sight of her small ear, flat to the head, pink with cold, but the ear of a game creature. Her nose, not aquiline, not masculine, still was not weak. Her chin, as I remember I noted even then, was strong, but lean and not over-laden with flesh. Her mouth, not thin-lipped and cold, yet not too loose and easy, was now plaintive as it was sweet in its full, red Cupid bow. Round and soft and gentle she seemed, yet all the lines of her figure, all the features of her face, betokened bone and breeding. The low-cut Indian shirt left her neck bare. I could see the brick red line of the sunburn creeping down; but most I noted, since ever it was my delight to trace good lineage in any creature, the splendid curve of her neck, not long and weak, not short and animal, but round and strong—perfect, I was willing to call that and every other thing about her.

She turned to me after a time and smiled wanly. "I am hungry," she said.

"We shall make a fire," I answered. "But first I must wait until my coat dries. The lining is wet, and we have no tinder. The bark is wet on the little trees; each spear of grass is wet."

Then I bethought me of an old expedient my father had once shown me. At the bandolier across my shoulder swung my bullet pouch and powder flask, in the former also some bits of tow along with the cleaning worm. I made a loose wad of the tow kept thus dry in the shelter of the pouch, and pushed this down the rifle barrel, after I had with some difficulty discharged the load already there. Then I rubbed a little more powder into another loose wad of tow, and fired the rifle into this. As luck would have it, some sparks still smoldered in the tow, and thus I was able once more to nurse up a tiny flame. I never knew before how comforting a fire might be. So now again we ate, and once more, as the hours advanced, we felt strength coming to us. Yet, in spite of the food, I was obliged to admit a strange aching in my head, and a hot fever burning in my bones.

"See the poor horse," she said, and pointed to our single steed, humped up in the wind, one hip high, his head low, all dejection.

"He must eat," said I, and so started to loosen his hobble. Thus engaged I thought to push on toward the top of the next ridge to see what might be beyond. What I saw was the worst thing that could have met my eyes. I sank down almost in despair.

There, on a flat valley nearly a mile away in its slow descent, stood the peaked tops of more than a score of Indian tepees. Horses were scattered all about. From the tops of the lodges little dribbles of smoke were coming. The wet of the morning kept the occupants within, but here and there a robed figure stalked among the horses.

I gazed through the fringe of grasses at the top of the ridge, feeling that now indeed our cup of danger well-nigh was full. For some moments I lay examining the camp, seeking to divine the intent of these people, whom I supposed to be Sioux. The size of the encampment disposed me to think that it was a hunting party and not an expedition out for war. I saw meat scaffolds, as I supposed, and strips of meat hanging over ropes strung here and there; although of this I could not be sure.

I turned as I heard a whisper at my shoulder. "What is it?" she asked me; and then the next moment, gazing as I did over the ridge, she saw. I felt her cower close to me in her instant terror. "My God!" she murmured, "what shall we do? They will find us; they will kill us!"

"Wait, now," said I. "They have not yet seen us. They may go away in quite the other direction. Do not be alarmed."

We lay there looking at this unwelcome sight for some moments, but at last I saw something which pleased me better.

The men among the horses stopped, looked, and began to hurry about, began to lead up their horses, to gesticulate. Then, far off upon the other side, I saw a blanket waving.

"It is the buffalo signal," I said to her. "They are going to hunt, and their hunt will be in the opposite direction from us. That is good."

We crept back from the top of the ridge, and I asked her to bring me the saddle blanket while I held the horse. This I bound fast around the horse's head.

"Why do you blind the poor fellow?" she inquired, "He cannot eat, he will starve. Besides, we ought to be getting away from here as fast as we can."

"I tie up his head so that he cannot see, or smell, and so fall to neighing to the other horses," I explained to her. "As to getting away, our trail would show plainly on this wet ground. All the trail we left yesterday has been wiped out; so that here is our very safest place, if they do not happen to run across the head of this little draw. Besides, we can still eat; and besides again—" perhaps I staggered a little as I stood.

"You are weak!" she exclaimed. "You are ill!"

"I must admit," said I, "that I could probably not travel far. If I dared tell you to go on alone and leave me, I would command you to do so."

Her face was pale. "What is wrong?" she asked. "Is it a fever? Is it your wound again?"

"It is fever," I answered thickly. "My head is bad. I do not see distinctly. If you please, I think I will lie down for a time."

I staggered blindly now as I walked. I felt her arm under mine. She led me to our little fireside, knelt on the wet ground beside me as I sat, my head hanging dully. I remember that her hands were clasped. I recall the agony on her face.

The day grew warmer as the sun arose. The clouds hung low and moved rapidly under the rising airs. Now and again I heard faint sounds, muffled, far off. "They are firing," I muttered. "They are among the buffalo. That is good. Soon they will go away."

I do not remember much of what I said after that, and recall only that my head throbbed heavily, and that I wanted to lie down and rest. And so, some time during that morning, I suppose, I did lie down, and once more laid hold upon the hand of Mystery.

I do not wish to speak of what followed after that. For me, a, merciful ignorance came; but what that poor girl must have suffered, hour after hour, night after night, day after day, alone, without shelter, almost without food, in such agony of terror as might have been natural even had her solitary protector been possessed of all his faculties—I say I cannot dwell upon that, because it makes the cold sweat stand on my face even now to think of it. So I will say only that one time I awoke. She told me later that she did not know whether it was two or three days we had been there thus. She told me that now and then she left me and crept to the top of the ridge to watch the Indian camp. She saw them come in from the chase, their horses loaded with meat. Then, as the sun came out, they went to drying meat, and the squaws began to scrape the hides. As they had abundant food they did not hunt more than that one day, and no one rode in our direction. Our horse she kept concealed and blindfolded until dark, when she allowed him to feed. This morning she had removed the blanket from his head, because now, as she told me with exultation, the Indians had broken camp, mounted and driven away, all of them, far off toward the west. She had cut and dried the remainder of our antelope meat, taking this hint from what we saw the Indians doing, and so most of our remaining meat had been saved.

I looked at her now, idly, dully. I saw that her belt was drawn tighter about a thinner waist. Her face was much thinner and browner, her eyes more sunken. The white strip of her lower neck was now brick red. I dared not ask her how she had gotten through the nights, because she had used the blanket to blindfold the horse. She had hollowed out a place for my hips to lie more easily, and pulled grasses for my bed. In all ways thoughtfulness and unselfishness had been hers. As I realized this, I put my hands over my face and groaned aloud. Then I felt her hand on my head.

"How did you eat?" I asked her. "You have no fire." "Once I had a fire," she said. "I made it with flint and steel as I saw you do. See," she added, and pointed to a ring of ashes, where there were bits of twigs and other fuel.

"Now you must eat," she said. "You are like a shadow. See, I have made you broth."

"Broth?" said I. "How?"

"In your hat," she said. "My father told me how the Indians boil water with hot stones. I tried it in my own hat first, but it is gone. A hot stone burned it through." Then I noticed that she was bareheaded. I lay still for a time, pondering feebly, as best I could, on the courage and resource of this girl, who now no doubt had saved my life, unworthy as it seemed to me. At last I looked up to her.

"After all, I may get well," I said. "Go now to the thicket at the head of the ravine, and see if there are any little cotton-wood trees. Auberry told me that the inner bark is bitter. It may act like quinine, and break the fever."

So presently she came back with my knife and her hands full of soft green bark which she had found. "It is bitter," said she, "but if I boil it it will spoil your broth." I drank of the crude preparation as best I might, and ate feebly as I might at some of the more tender meat thus softened. And then we boiled the bitter bark, and I drank that water, the only medicine we might have. Alas! it was our last use of my hat as a kettle, for now it, too, gave way.

"Now," she said to me, "I must leave you for a time. I am going over to the Indian camp to see what I can find."

She put my head in the saddle for a pillow, and gave me the remnant of her hat for a shade. I saw her go away, clad like an Indian woman, her long braids down her back, her head bare, her face brown, her moccasined feet slipping softly over the grasses, the metals of her leggins tinkling. My eyes followed her as long as she remained visible, and it seemed to me hours before she returned. I missed her.

She came back laughing and joyful. "See!" she exclaimed. "Many things! I have found a knife, and I have found a broken kettle; and here is an awl made from a bone; and here is something which I think their women use in scraping hides." She showed me all these things, last the saw-edged bone, or scraping hoe of the squaws, used for dressing hides, as she had thought.

"Now I am a squaw," she said, smiling oddly. She stood thoughtfully looking at these things for a time. "Yes," she said, "we are savages now."

I looked at her, but could see no despair on her face. "I do not believe you are afraid," I said to her. "You are a splendid creature. You are brave."

She looked down at me at length as I lay. "Have courage, John Cowles," she said. "Get well now soon, so that we may go and hunt. Our meat is nearly gone."

"But you do not despair," said I, wondering. She shook her head.

"Not yet. Are we not as well off as those?" she pointed toward the old encampment of the Indians. A faint tinge came to her cheeks. "It is strange," said she, "I feel as if the world had absolutely come to an end, and yet—"

"It is just beginning," said I to her. "We are alone. This is the first garden of the world. You are the first woman; I am the first cave man, and all the world depends on us. See," I said—perhaps still a trifle confused in my mind—"all the arts and letters of the future, all the paintings, all the money and goods of all the world; all the peace and war, and all the happiness and content of the world rest with us, just us two. We are the world, you and I."

She sat thoughtful and silent for a time, a faint pink, as I said, just showing on her cheeks.

"John Cowles, of Virginia," she said simply, "now tell me, how shall I mend this broken kettle?"

Chapter XXVII - With All My Worldly Goods I Thee Endow

Poor, indeed, in worldly goods must be those to whom the discarded refuse of an abandoned Indian camp seems wealth. Yet such was the case with us, two representatives of the higher civilization, thus removed from that civilization by no more than a few days' span. As soon as I was able to stand we removed our little encampment to the ground lately occupied by the Indian village.

We must have food, and I could not yet hunt. Here at the camp we found some bits of dried meat. We found a ragged and half-hairless robe, discarded by some squaw, and to us it seemed priceless, for now we had a house by day and a bed by night. A half-dozen broken lodge poles seemed riches to us. We hoarded some broken moccasins which had been thrown away. Like jackals we prowled around the filth and refuse of this savage encampment—-we, so lately used to all the comforts that civilization could give.

In the minds of us both came a thought new to both—a desire for food. Never before had we known how urgent is this desire. How few, indeed, ever really know what hunger is! If our great men, those who shape the destinies of a people, could know what hunger means, how different would be their acts! The trail of the lodge poles of these departing savages showed where they had gone farther in their own senseless pursuit of food, food. We also must eat. After that might begin all the deeds of the world. The surplus beyond the necessary provender of the hour is what constitutes the world's progress, its philosophy, its art, all its stored material gains. We who sat there under the shade of our ragged hide, gaunt, browned by the sun, hatless, ill-clad, animals freed from the yoke of society, none the less were not free from the yet more perpetual yoke of savagery.

For myself, weakened by sickness, such food as we had was of little service. I knew that I was starving, and feared that she was doing little better. I looked at her that morning, after we had propped up our little canopy of hide to break the sun. Her face was clean drawn now into hard lines of muscle. Her limbs lay straight and clean before her as she sat, her hands lying in her lap as she looked out across the plains. Her eyes were still brown and clear, her figure still was that of woman; she was still sweet to look upon, but her cheeks were growing hollow. I said to myself that she suffered, that she needed food. Upon us rested the fate of the earth, as it seemed to me. Unless presently I could arise and kill meat for her, then must the world roll void through the ether, unpeopled ever more.

It was at that time useless for us to think of making our way to any settlements or any human aid. The immediate burden of life was first to be supported. And yet we were unable to go out in search of food. I know not what thoughts came to her mind as we sat looking out on the pictures o; the mirage which the sun was painting on the desert landscape. But, finally, as we gazed, there seemed, among these weird images, one colossal tragic shape which moved, advanced, changed definitely. Now It stood in giant stature, and now dwindled, but always it came nearer. At last it darkened and denned and so disappeared beyond a blue ridge not half a mile away from us. We realized at last that it was a solitary buffalo bull, no doubt coming down to water at a little coulee just beyond us. I turned to look at her, and saw her eyes growing fierce. She reached back for my rifle, and I arose.

"Come," I said, and so we started. We dared not use the horse in stalking our game.

I could stand, I could walk a short way, but the weight of this great rifle, sixteen pounds or more, which I had never felt before, now seemed to crush me down. I saw that I was starved, that the sap was gone from my muscles. I could stagger but a few yards before I was obliged to stop and put down the rifle. She came and put her arm about me firmly, her face frowning and eager. But a tall man can ill be aided by a woman of her stature.

"Can you go?" she said.

"No," said I, "I cannot; but I must and I shall." I put away her arm from me, but in turn she caught up the rifle. Even for this I was still too proud. "No," said I, "I have always carried my own weapons thus far."

"Come, then," she said, "this way"; and so caught the muzzle of the heavy barrel and walked on, leaving me the stock to support for my share of the weight. Thus we carried the great rifle between us, and so stumbled on, until at length the sun grew too warm for me, and I dropped, overcome with fatigue. Patiently she waited for me, and so we two, partners, mates, a man and a woman, primitive, the first, went on little by little.

I knew that the bull would in all likelihood stop near the rivulet, for his progress seemed to indicate that he was very old or else wounded. Finally I could see his huge black hump standing less than a quarter of a mile away from the ridge where I last paused. I motioned to her, and she crept to my side, like some desert creature. We were hunting animals now, the two sexes of Man—nothing more.

"Go," said I, motioning toward the rifle. "I am too weak. I might miss. I can get no farther."

She caught up the rifle barrel at its balancing point, looked to the lock as a man might have done, and leaned forward, eager as any man for the chase. There was no fear in her eye.

"Where shall I shoot it?" she whispered to me, as though it might overhear her.

"At the life, at the bare spot where his shoulder rubs, very low down," I said to her. "And when you shoot, drop and He still. He will soon lie down."

Lithe, brown, sinuous, she crept rapidly away, and presently was hid where the grass grew taller in the flat beyond. The bull moved forward a little also, and I lost sight of both for what seemed to me an unconscionable time. She told me later that she crept close to the water hole and waited there for the bull to come, but that he stood back and stared ahead stupidly and would not move. She said she trembled when at last he approached, so savage was his look. Even a man might be smitten with terror at the fierce aspect of one of these animals.

But at last I heard the bitter crack of the rifle and, raising my head, I saw her spring up and then drop down again. Then, staggering a short way up the opposite slope, I saw the slow bulk of the great black bull. He turned and looked back, his head low, his eyes straight ahead. Then slowly he kneeled down, and so died, with his forefeet doubled under him.

She came running back to me, full of savage joy at her Success, and put her arm under my shoulder and told me to come. Slowly, fast as I could, I went with her to our prey.

We butchered our buffalo as Auberry had showed me, from the backbone down, as he sat dead on his forearms, splitting the skin along the spine, and laying it out for the meat to rest upon. Again I made a fire by shooting a tow wad into such tinder as we could arrange from my coat lining, having dried this almost into flame by a burning-glass I made out of a watch crystal filled with water, not in the least a weak sort of lens. She ran for fuel, and for water, and now we cooked and ate, the fresh meat seeming excellent to me. Once more now we moved our camp, the girl returning for the horse and our scanty belongings.

Always now we ate, haggling out the hump ribs, the tongue, the rich back fat; so almost immediately we began to gain In strength. All the next day we worked as we could at drying the meat, and taking the things we needed from the carcass. We got loose one horn, drying one side of the head in the fire. I saved carefully all the sinews of the back, knowing we might need them. Then between us we scraped At the two halves of the hide, drying it in the sun, fleshing it with our little Indian hoe, and presently rubbing into it brains from the head of the carcass, as the hide grew drier in the sun. We were not yet skilled in tanning as the Indian women are, but we saw that now we would have a house and a bed apiece, and food, food. We broiled the ribs at our fire, boiled the broken leg bones in our little kettle. We made fillets of hide to shade our eyes, she thus binding back the long braids of her hair. We rested and were comforted. Each hour, it seemed to me, she rounded and became more beautiful, supple, young, strong—there, in the beginning of the world. We were rich in these, our belongings, which we shared.

Chapter XXVIII - Till Death Do Part

Hitherto, while I was weak, exhausted, and unable to reason beyond the vague factors of anxiety and dread, she had cared for me simply, as though she were a young boy and I an older man. The small details of our daily life she had assumed, because she still was the stronger. Without plot or plan, and simply through the stern command of necessity, our interests had been identical, our plans covered us both as one. At night, for the sake of warmth, we had slept closely, side by side, both too weary and worn out to reason regarding that or any other thing. Once, in the night, I know I felt her arm across my face, upon my head her hand—she still sleeping, and millions of miles away among the stars. I would not have waked her.

But now, behold the strange story of man's advance in what he calls civilization. Behold what property means in regard to what we call laws. We were rich now. We had two pieces of robe instead of one. We might be two creatures now, a man and a woman, a wall between, instead of two suffering, perishing animals, with but one common need, that of self-preservation. There were two houses now, two beds; because this might be and still allow us to survive. Our table was common, and that was all.

I grew stronger rapidly. In spite of my wish, my eyes rested upon her; and thus I noticed that she had changed. My little boy was no longer a little boy, but some strange creature—I knew hot what—like to nothing I had ever seen or known; like no woman of the towns, and no savage of the plains, but better than both and different from either, inscrutable, sweet, yes, and very sad. Often I saw tears in her eyes.

During that first night when we slept apart, the wolves came very close to our meat heaps and set up their usual roaring chorus. The terror of this she could not endure, and so she came creeping with her half robe to my side where I lay. That was necessary. Later that night when she awoke under the shelter of her half hide, she found me sitting awake, near the opening. But she would not have me put over her my portion of the robe. She made of our party two individuals, and that I must understand. I must understand now that society was beginning again, and law, and custom. My playfellow was gone. I liked scarce so well this new creature, with the face of a Sphinx, the form of a woman, the eyes of something hurt, that wept—that wept, because of these results of my own awkwardness and misfortunes.

I say that I was growing stronger. At night, in front of her poor shelter, I sat and thought, and looked out at the stars. The stars said to me that life and desire were one, that the world must go on, that all the future of the world rested with us two. But at this I rebelled. "Ah, prurient stars!" I cried, "and evil of mind! What matters it that you suffer or that I suffer? Let the world end, yes, let the world end before this strange new companion, gained in want, and poverty, and suffering, and now lost by reason of comforts and health, shall shed one tear of suffering!"

But sometimes, worn out by watching, I, too, must lie down. Again, in her sleep, I felt her arm rest upon my neck. Now, God give me what He listeth, but may not this thing come to me again.

For now, day by day, night by night, against all my will and wish, against all my mind and resolution, I knew that I was loving this new being with all my heart and all my soul, forsaking all others, and that this would be until death should us part. I knew that neither here nor elsewhere in the world was anything which could make me whole of this—no principles of duty or honor, no wish nor inclination nor resolve!

I had eaten. I loved. I saw what life is.

I saw the great deceit of Nature. I saw her plan, her wish, her merciless, pitiless desire; and seeing this, I smiled slowly in the dark at the mockery of what we call civilization, its fuss and flurry, its pretense, its misery. Indeed, we are small, but life is not small. We are small, but love is very large and strong, born as it is of the great necessity that man shall not forget the world, that woman shall not rob the race.

For myself, I accepted my station in this plan, saying nothing beyond my own soul. None the less, I said there to my own soul, that this must be now, till death should come to part us twain.

Chapter XXIX - The Garden

Soon now we would be able to travel; but whither, and for what purpose? I began to shrink from the thought of change. This wild world was enough for me. So long as we might eat and sleep thus, and so long as I might not lose sight of her, it seemed to me I could not anywhere gain in happiness and content. Elsewhere I must lose both.

None the less we must travel. We had been absent now from civilization some three weeks, and must have been given up long since. Our party must have passed far to the westward, and by this time our story was known at Laramie and elsewhere. Parties were no doubt in search of us at that time. But where should these search in that wilderness of the unknown Plains. How should it be known that we were almost within touch of the great highway of the West, now again thronging with wagon trains? By force of these strange circumstances which I have related we were utterly gone, blotted out; our old world no longer existed for us, nor we for it.

As I argued to myself again and again, the laws and customs of that forgotten world no longer belonged to us. We must build laws again, laws for the good of the greatest number. I can promise, who have been in place to know, that in one month's time civilization shall utterly fade away from the human heart, that a new state of life shall within that space enforce itself, so close lies the savage in us always to the skin. This vast scheme of organized selfishness, which is called civilization, shall within three weeks be forgot and found useless, be rescinded as a contract between remaining units of society. This vast fabric of waste and ruin known as wealth shall be swept away at a breath within one month. Then shall endure only the great things of life. Above those shall stand two things—a woman and a man. Without these society is not, these two, a woman and a man.

So I would sit at night, nodding under the stars, and vaguely dreaming of these matters, and things came to me sweetly, things unknown in our ignorance and evil of mind, as we live in what we call civilization. They would become clear underneath the stars; and then the dawn would come, and she would come and sit by me, looking out over the Plains at the shimmering pictures. "What do you see?" she would ask of me.

"I see the ruins of that dome known as the capitol of our nation," I said to her, "where they make laws. See, it is in ruins, and what I see beyond is better."

"Then what more do you see," she would ask.

"I see the ruins of tall buildings of brick and iron, prisons where souls are racked, and deeds of evil are done, and iron sunk into human hearts, and vice and crime, and oppression and wrong of life and love are wrought. These are in ruins, and what I see beyond is better." Humoring me, she would ask that I would tell her further what I saw.

"I see the ruins of tall spires, where the truth was offered by bold assertion. I see the ruins of religion, corrupt because done for gain.

"I see houses also, much crowded, where much traffic and bartering and evil was done, much sale of flesh and blood and love and happiness, ruin, unhappiness. And what I see now is far better than all that."

"And then—" she whispered faintly, her hand upon my sleeve, and looking out with me over the Plains, where the mirage was wavering.

"I see there," I said, and pointed it out to her, "only a Garden, a vast, sweet Garden. And there arises a Tree—-one Tree."

This was my world. But she, looking out over the Plains, still saw with the eye of yesterday. Upon woman the artificial imprint of heredity is set more deeply than with man. The commands of society are wrought into her soul.

Chapter XXX - They Twain

Even as we were putting together our small belongings for the resumption of our journey, I looked up and saw what I took to be a wolf, stalking along in the grass near the edge of our encampment. I would have shot it, but reflected that I must not waste a shot on wolves. Advancing closer toward it, as something about its motions attracted me, I saw it was a dog. It would not allow me to approach, but as Ellen came it lay down in the grass, and she got close to it.

"It is sick," she said, "or hurt," and she tossed it a bone.

"Quick," I called out to her, "get it! Tame it. It is worth more than riches to us, that dog."

So she, coaxing it, at last got her hands upon its head, though it would not wag its tail or make any sign of friendship. It was a wolfish mongrel Indian dog. One side of its head was cut or crushed, and it seemed that possibly some squaw had struck it, with intent perhaps to put it into the kettle, but with aim so bad that the victim had escaped.

To savage man, a dog is of nearly as much use as a horse. Now we had a horse and a dog, and food, and weapons, and shelter. It was time we should depart, and we now were well equipped to travel. But whither?

"It seems to me," said I, "that our safest plan is to keep away from the Platte, where the Indians are more apt to be. If we keep west until we reach the mountains, we certainly will be above Laramie, and then if we follow south along the mountains, we must strike the Platte again, and so find Laramie, if we do not meet any one before that time." It may be seen how vague was my geography in regard to a region then little known to any.

"My father will have out the whole Army looking for us," said Ellen Meriwether to me. "We may be found any day."

But for many a day we were not found. We traveled westward day after day, she upon the horse, I walking with the dog. We had a rude travois, which we forced our horse to draw, and our little belongings we carried in a leathern bag, slung between two lodge poles. The dog we did not yet load, although the rubbed hair on his shoulders showed that he was used to harness.

At times on these high rolling plains we saw the buffalo, and when our dried meat ran low I paused for food, not daring to risk waste of our scanty ammunition at such hard game as antelope. Once I lay at a path near a water hole in the pocket of a half-dried stream, and killed two buffalo cows. Here was abundant work for more than two days, cutting, drying, scraping, feasting. Life began to run keen in our veins, in spite of all. I heard her sing, that day, saw her smile. Now our worldly goods were increasing, so I cut down two lodge poles and made a little travois for the dog. We had hides enough now for a small tent, needing only sufficient poles.

"Soon," said she to me, "we will be at Laramie."

"Pray God," said I to myself, "that we never may see Laramie!" I have said that I would set down the truth. And this is the truth; I was becoming a savage. I truly wanted nothing better. I think this might happen to many a man, at least of that day.

We forded several streams, one a large one, which I now think must have been the North Platte; but no river ran as we fancied the Platte must run. So we kept on, until we came one day to a spot whence we saw something low and unmoving and purple, far off in the northwest. This we studied, and so at length saw that it was the mountains. At last our journeying would change, at least, perhaps terminate ere long. A few more days would bring us within touch of this distant range, which, as I suppose now, might possibly have been a spur of what then were still called the Black Hills, a name which applied to several ranges far to the west and south of the mountains now so called. Or perhaps these were peaks of the mountains later called the Laramie Range.

Then came a thing hard for us to bear. Our horse, hobbled as usual for the night, and, moreover, picketed on a long rope I had made from buffalo hides, managed some time in the night to break his hobbles and in some way to pull loose the picket pin. When we saw that he was gone we looked at each other blankly.

"What shall we do?" she asked me in horror. For the first time I saw her sit down in despair. "We are lost! What shall we do?" she wailed.

I trailed the missing horse for many miles, but could only tell he was going steadily, lined out for some distant point. I dared not pursue him farther and leave her behind. An hour after noon I returned and sullenly threw myself on the ground beside her at our little bivouac. I could not bear to think of her being reduced to foot travel over all these cruel miles. Yet, indeed, it now must come to that.

"We have the dog," said I at length. "We can carry a robe and a little meat, and walk slowly. I can carry a hundred pound pack if need be, and the dog can take twenty-five—"

"And I can carry something," she said, rising with her old courage. "It is my part." I made her a pack of ten pounds, and soon seeing that it was too heavy, I took it from her and threw it on my own.

"At least I shall carry the belt," she said. And so she took my belt, with its flask and bullet pouch, the latter now all too scantily filled.

Thus, sore at heart, and somewhat weary, we struggled on through that afternoon, and sank down beside a little water hole. And that night, when I reached to her for my belt that we might again make our fire, she went pale and cried aloud that she had lost it, and that now indeed we must die!

I could hardly comfort her by telling her that on the morrow I would certainly find it. I knew that in case I did not our plight indeed was serious. She wept that night, wept like a child, starting and moaning often in her sleep. That night, for the first time, I took her in my arms and tried to comfort her. I, being now a savage, prayed to the Great Spirit, the Mystery, that my own blood might not be as water, that my heart might be strong—the old savage prayers of primitive man brought face to face with nature.

When morning came I told her I must go back on the trail. "See, now, what this dog has done for us," I said. "The scratches on the ground of his little travois poles will make a trail easy to be followed. I must take him with me and run back the trail. For you, stay here by the water and no matter what your fears, do not move from here in any case, even if I should not be back by night."

"But what if you should not come back!" she said, her terror showing in her eyes.

"But I will come back," I replied. "I will never leave you. I would rise from my grave to come back to you. But the time has not yet come to lie down and die. Be strong. We shall yet be safe."

So I was obliged to turn and leave her sitting alone there, the gray sweep of the merciless Plains all about her. Another woman would have gone mad.

But it was as I said. This dog was our savior. Without his nose I could not have traced out the little travois trail; but he, seeing what was needed, and finding me nosing along and doubling back and seeking on the hard ground, seemed to know what was required, or perhaps himself thought to go back to some old camp for food. So presently he trotted along, his ears up, his nose straight ahead; and I, a savage, depended upon a creature still a little lower in the order of life, and that creature proved a faithful servant.

We went on at a swinging walk, or trot, or lope, as the ground said, and ate up the distance at twice the speed we had used the day before. In a couple of hours I was close to where she had taken the belt, and so at last I saw the dog drop his nose and sniff. There were the missing riches, priceless beyond gold—the little leaden balls, the powder, dry in its horn, the little rolls of tow, the knife swung at the girdle! I knelt down there on the sand, I, John Cowles, once civilized and now heathen, and I raised my frayed and ragged hands toward the Mystery, and begged that I might be forever free of the great crime of thanklessness. Then, laughing at the dog, and loping on tireless as when I was a boy, I ran as though sickness and weakness had never been mine, and presently came back to the place where I had left her.

She saw me coming. She ran out to meet me, holding out her arms.... I say she came, holding out her arms to me.

"Sit down here by my side," I commanded her. "I must talk to you. I will—I will."

"Do not," she implored of me, seeing what was in my mind. "Ah, what shall I do! You are not fair!"

But I took her hands in mine. "I can endure it no longer," I said. "I will not endure it."

She looked at me with her eyes wide—looked me full in the face with such a gaze as I have never seen on any woman's face.

"I love you," I said to her. "I have never loved any one else. I can never love any one again but you." I say that I, John Cowles, had at that moment utterly forgotten all of life and all of the world except this, then and there. "I love you!" I said, over and over again to her.

She pushed away my arm. "They are all the same," she said, as though to herself.

"Yes, all the same," I said. "There is no man who would not love you, here or anywhere."

"To how many have you said that?" she asked me, frowning, as though absorbed, studious, intent on some problem.

"To some," I said to her, honestly. "But it was never thus."

She curled her lip, scorning the truth which she had asked now that she had it. "And if any other woman were here it would be the same. It is because I am here, because we are alone, because I am a woman—ah, that is neither wise nor brave nor good of you!"

"That is not true! Were it any other woman, yes, what you say might be true in one way. But I love you not because you are a woman. It is because you are Ellen. You would be the only woman in the world, no matter where we were nor how many were about us. Though I could choose from all the world, it would be the same!"

She listened with her eyes far away, thinking, thinking. "It is the old story," she sighed.

"Yes, the old story," I said. "It is the same story, the old one. There are the witnesses, the hills, the sky."

"You seem to have thought of such things," she said to me, slowly. "I have not thought. I have simply lived along, enjoying life, not thinking. Do we love because we are but creatures? I cannot be loved so—I will not be! I will not submit that what I have sometimes dreamed shall be so narrow as this. John Cowles, a woman must be loved for herself, not for her sex, by some one who is a man, but who is beside—"

"Oh, I have said all that. I loved you the first time I saw you—the first time, there at the dance."

"And forgot, and cared for another girl the next day.' She argued that all over again.

"That other girl was you," I once more reiterated.

"And again you forgot me."

"And again what made me forget you was yourself! Each time you were that other girl, that other woman. Each time I have seen you you have been different, and each time I have loved you over again. Each day I see you now you are different, Ellen, and each day I love you more. How many times shall I solve this same problem, and come to the same answer. I tell you, the thing is ended and done for me."

"It is easy to think so here, with only the hills and skies to see and hear."

"No, it would be the same," I said. "It is not because of that."

"It is not because I am in your power?" she said. She turned and faced me, her hands on my shoulders, looking me full in the eye. The act a brave one.

"Because I am in your power, John Cowles?" she asked. "Because by accident you have learned that I am a comely woman, as you are a strong man, normal, because I am fit to love, not ill to look at? Because a cruel accident has put me where my name is jeopardized forever—in a situation out of which I can never, never come clean again—is that why? Do you figure that I am a woman because you are a man? Is that why? Is it because you know I am human, and young, and fit for love? Ah, I know that as well as you. But I am in your hands—I am in your power. That is why I say, John Cowles, that you must try to think, that you must do nothing which shall make me hate you or make you hate yourself."

"I thought you missed me when I was gone," I murmured faintly.

"I did miss you," she said. "The world seemed ended for me. I needed you, I wanted you—" I turned toward her swiftly. "Wanted me?"

"I was glad to see you come back. While you were gone I thought. Yes, you have been brave and you have been kind, and you have been strong. Now I am only asking you still to be brave, and kind, and strong."

"But do you love me, will you love me—can you—"

"Because we are here," she said, "I will not answer. What is right, John Cowles, that we should do."

Woman is strongest when armored in her own weakness. My hands fell to the ground beside me. The heats vanished from my blood. I shuddered. I could not smile without my mouth going crooked, I fear. But at last I smiled as best I could, and I said to her, "Ellen! Ellen!" That was all I could find to say.