“Tavish?” She pursed her lips into a red “O,” and little lines gathered thoughtfully between her eyes.  “Tavish?  No-o-o, I never have.”

“He lived at one time on Firepan Creek.  Had small-pox,” said David.

“That is terrible,” the girl shuddered.  “The Indians die of it up here.  Hauck says that my father and mother died of small-pox, before I could remember.  It is all like a dream.  I can see a woman’s face sometimes, and I can remember a cabin, and snow, and lots of dogs.  Are you ready to go?”

He shouldered his pack, and as he arranged the straps Marge ran to Tara.  At her command the big beast rose slowly and stood before her, swinging his head from side to side, his jaws agape.  David called to Baree and the dog came to him like a streak and stood against his leg, snarling fiercely.

“Tut, tut,” admonished David, softly, laying a hand on Baree’s head.  “We’re all friends, boy.  Look here!”

He walked straight over to the grizzly and tried to induce Baree to follow him.  Baree came half way and then sat himself on his haunches and refused to budge another inch, an expression so doleful in his face that it drew from the girl’s lips a peal of laughter in which David found it impossible not to join.  It was delightfully infectious; he was laughing more with her than at Baree.  In the same breath his merriment was cut short by an unexpected and most amazing discovery.  Tara, after all, had his usefulness.  His mistress had vaulted astride of him, and was nudging him with her heels, leaning forward so that with one hand she was pulling at his left ear.  The bear turned slowly, his finger-long claws clicking on the stones, and when his head was in the right direction Marge released his ear and spoke sharply, beating a tattoo with her heels at the same time.

“Neah, Tara, Neah!” she cried.

After a moment’s hesitation, in which the grizzly seemed to be getting his bearings, Tara struck out straight for the break between the mountains, with his burden.  The girl turned and waved a beckoning hand at David.

“Pao! you must hurry!” she called to him, laughing at the astonishment in his face.

He had started to fill his pipe, but for the next few minutes he forgot that the pipe was in his hand.  His eyes did not leave the huge beast, ambling along a dozen paces ahead of him, or the slip of a girl who rode him.  He had caught a glimpse of Baree, and the dog’s eyes seemed to be bulging.  He half believed that his own mouth was open when the girl called to him.  What had happened was most startlingly unexpected, and what he stared at now was a wondrous sight!  Tara travelled with the rolling, slouching gait typical of the wide-quartered grizzly, and the girl was a sinuous part of him—­by all odds the most wonderful thing in the world to David at this moment.  Her hair streamed down her back in a cascade of sunlit glory.  She flung back her head, and he thought of a wonderful golden-bronze