“I began the day after Brokaw did that—­held me there in his arms, with my head bent back. Ugh! he was terrible, with his face so close to mine!” She shuddered.  “Afterward I washed my face, and scrubbed it hard, but I could still feel it.  I can feel it now!” Her eyes were darkening again, as the sun darkens when a thunder cloud passes under it.  “I wanted to make Tara understand what he must do after that, so I stole some of Brokaw’s clothes and carried them up to a little plain on the side of the mountain.  I stuffed them with grass, and made a ... what do you call it?  In Indian it is issena-koosewin....”

“A dummy,” he said.

She nodded.

“Yes, that is it.  Then I would go with it a little distance from Tara, and would begin to struggle with it, and scream.  The third time, when Tara saw me lying under it, kicking and screaming, he gave it a blow with his paw that ripped it clean in two!  And after that....”

Her eyes were glorious in their wild triumph.

“He would tear it into bits,” she cried breathlessly.  “It would take me a whole day to mend it again, and at last I had to steal more clothes.  I took Hauck’s this time.  And soon they were gone, too.  That is just what Tara will do to a man—­when I fight and scream!”

“And a little while ago you were ready to jump at me, and fight and scream!” he reminded her, smiling across their rock table.

“Not after you spoke to me,” she said, so quickly that the words seemed to spring straight from her heart.  “I wasn’t afraid then.  I was—­glad.  No, I wouldn’t scream—­not even if you held me like Brokaw did!”

He felt the warm blood rising under his skin again.  It was impossible to keep it down.  And he was ashamed of it—­ashamed of the thought that for an instant was in his mind.  The soul of the wild, little mountain creature was in her eyes.  Her lips made no concealment of its thoughts or its emotions, pure as the blue skies above them and as ungoverned by conventionality as the winds that shifted up and down the valleys.  She was a new sort of being to him, a child-woman, a little wonder-nymph that had grown up with the flowers.  And yet not so little after all.  He had noticed that the top of her shining head came considerably above his chin.

“Then you will not be afraid to go back to the Nest—­with me?” he asked.

“No,” she said with a direct and amazing confidence.  “But I’d rather run away with you.”  Then she added quickly, before he could speak:  “Didn’t you say you came all that way—­hundreds of miles—­to find me?  Then why must we go back?”