“You are a tenderfoot, and you couldn’t shoot,” she continued eulogistically, as if it were necessary to have it all stated plainly, “but you—­you are what my brother used to call ‘a white man.’  You couldn’t shoot; but you could risk your life, and hold that coat, and look death in the face. You are no tenderfoot.”

There was eloquence in her eyes, and in her voice there were tears.  She turned away to hide if any were in her eyes.  But the man put out his hand on her sure little brown one, and took it firmly in his own, looking down upon her with his own eyes filled with tears of which he was not ashamed.

“And what am I to say to you for saving my life?” he said.

“I?  O, that was easy,” said the girl, rousing to the commonplace.  “I can always shoot.  Only you were hard to drag away.  You seemed to want to stay there and die with your coat.”

“They laughed at me for wearing that coat when we started away.  They said a hunter never bothered himself with extra clothing,” he mused as they walked away from the terrible spot.

“Do you think it was the prayer?” asked the girl suddenly.

“It may be!” said the man with wondering accent.

Then quietly, thoughtfully, they mounted and rode onward.

Their way, due east, led them around the shoulder of a hill.  It was tolerably smooth, but they were obliged to go single file, so there was very little talking done.

It was nearly the middle of the afternoon when all at once a sound reached them from below, a sound so new that it was startling.  They stopped their horses, and looked at each other.  It was the faint sound of singing wafted on the light breeze, singing that came in whiffs like a perfume, and then died out.  Cautiously they guided their horses on around the hill, keeping close together now.  It was plain they were approaching some human being or beings.  No bird could sing like that.  There were indistinct words to the music.

They rounded the hillside, and stopped again side by side.  There below them lay the trail for which they had been searching, and just beneath them, nestled against the hill, was a little schoolhouse of logs, weather-boarded, its windows open; and behind it and around it were horses tied, some of them hitched to wagons, but most of them with saddles.

The singing was clear and distinct now.  They could hear the words.  “O, that will be glory for me, glory for me, glory for me—­”

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Why, I suspect it is a Sunday school or something of the kind.”

“O!  A school!  Could we go in?”

“If you like,” said the man, enjoying her simplicity.  “We can tie out horses here behind the building, and they can rest.  There is fresh grass in this sheltered place; see?”

He led her down behind the schoolhouse to a spot where the horses could not be seen from the trail.  The girl peered curiously around the corner into the window.  There sat two young girls about her own age, and one of them smiled at her.  It seemed an invitation.  She smiled back, and went on to the doorway reassured.  When she entered the room, she found them pointing to a seat near a window, behind a small desk.