All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on
and leave that camp unmolested, but an overwhelming,
tingling curiosity besieged her. The thin column
of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and
reaching the unsheltered space above the trees, was
smitten by a light wind and jerked away at a sharp
angle.
She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap
of the tips of limbs of spruce, a bed softer than
down and more fragrant than any manufactured perfume,
however costly.
Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted
her down from the saddle, at last. With the reins
over her arm, she stood close to the fire and warmed
her hands, peering all the while on every side, like
some wild and beautiful creature tempted by the bait
of the trap, but shrinking from the scent of man.
As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its
way above the hills and rolled up through the black
trees and then floated through the sky. Beneath
such a moon no harm could come to her. It was
while she stared at it, letting her tensed alertness
relax little by little, that she saw, or thought she
saw, a hint of moving white pass over the top of the
rise of ground and disappear among the trees.
She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to
gather the reins with a jerk and place her foot in
the stirrup; but then she looked back and saw the
fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice
to be replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel
nearby; and she saw also the softly piled bed of evergreens.
She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered
that imaginary figure of moving white? She felt
a strong power of protection lying all about her,
breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines,
fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze.
She was alone, but she was secure in the wilderness.
For many a minute she waited by that camp-fire, but
there was never a sign of the builder of it, though
she centered all her will in making her eyes and ears
sharper to pierce through the darkness and to gather
from the thousand obscure whispers of the forest any
sounds of human origin. So she grew bold at length
to take off the pack and the saddles; the camp was
hers, built for her coming by the invisible power
which surrounded her, which read her mind, it seemed,
and chose beforehand the certain route which she must
follow.
She resigned herself to that force without question,
and the worry of her search disappeared. It seemed
certain that this omnipotence, whatever it might be,
was reading her wishes and acting with all its power
to fulfill them, so that in the end it was merely a
question of time before she should accomplish her
mission—before she should meet Pierre le
Rouge face to face.
That night her sleep was deep, indeed, and she only
wakened when the slant light of the sun struck across
her eyes. It was a bright day, crisp and chill,
and through the clear air the mountains seemed leaning
directly above her, and chief of all two peaks, almost
exactly similar, black monsters which ruled the range.
Toward the gorge between them the valley of the Old
Crow aimed its course, and straight up that diminishing
canyon she rode all day.
