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.