a fire no larger than his two hands, and at his side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair rippling down her back.  It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was Keok.  She dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner of her coming, was only a moment behind.  And then he was shaking hands with Stampede, and Keok had slipped down among the flowers and was crying.  That was like Keok.  She always cried when he went away, and cried when he returned; and then, in another moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed she no longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her own.

These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of way.  No one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and nerves were fighting to recover themselves.  His senses were swimming back one by one to a vital point from which they had been swept by an unexpected sea, gripping rather incoherently at unimportant realities as they assembled themselves.  In the edge of the tundra beyond the cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads.  He drew off his pack as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks.  Nawadlook was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire.  Stampede began to fill a pipe.  He realized that because they had expected him, if not today then tomorrow or the next day or a day soon after that, no one had experienced shock but himself, and with a mighty effort he reached back and dragged the old Alan Holt into existence again.  It was like bringing an intelligence out of darkness into light.

It was difficult for him—­afterward—­to remember just what happened during the next half-hour.  The amazing thing was that Mary Standish sat opposite him, with the cloth on which Nawadlook had spread the supper things between them, and that she was the same clear-eyed, beautiful Mary Standish who had sat across the table from him in the dining-salon of the Nome.

Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had been gathering begin to sweep upon him.  It had been Keok’s suggestion that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea.  She had smiled at him as she left, and a little farther out had waved her hand at him, as Keok and Nawadlook both had done, but not another word had passed between them alone.  And as they rode off in the warm glow of sunset Alan stood watching them, and would have stared without speech until they were out of sight, if Stampede’s fingers had not gripped his arm.