“We’ll camp there and have supper.  I believe it is far enough down for a fire.  And if it is impossible for you to ride Tara—­I’m going to carry you!”

“You can’t, Sakewawin” she sighed, letting her head touch his arm for a moment.  “It is more difficult to carry a load down a mountain than up.  I can walk.”

Before he could stop her she had begun to descend.  They went down quickly—­three times as quickly as they had climbed the other side—­and when, half an hour later, they reached the timber in the dip, he felt as if his back were broken.  The girl had persistently kept ahead of him, and with a little cry of triumph she dropped down at the foot of the first balsam they came to.  The pupils of her eyes were big and dark as she looked up at him, quivering with the strain of the last great effort, and yet she tried to smile at him.

“You may carry me—­some time—­but not down a mountain,” she said, and laid her head wearily on the pillow of her arm, so that her face was concealed from him.  “And now—­please get supper, Sakewawin.”

He spread his blanket over her before he began searching for a camp site.  He noticed that Tara was already hunting for roots.  Baree followed close at his master’s heels.  Quite near, David found a streamlet that trickled down from the snow line, and to a grassy plot on the edge of this he dragged a quantity of dry wood and built a fire.  Then he made a thick couch of balsam boughs and went to his little companion.  In the half hour he had been at work she had fallen asleep.  Utter exhaustion was in the limpness of her slender body as he raised her gently in his arms.  The handkerchief had slipped back over her shoulder and she was wonderfully sweet, and helpless, as she lay with her head on his breast.  She was still asleep when he placed her on the balsams, and it was dark when he awakened her for supper.  The fire was burning brightly.  Tara had stretched himself out in a huge, dark bulk in the outer glow of it.  Baree was close to the fire.  The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes, and stared at David.

“Sakewawin,” she whispered then, looking about her in a moment’s bewilderment.

“Supper,” he said, smiling.  “I did it all while you were napping, little lady.  Are you hungry?”

He had spread their meal so that she did not have to move from her balsams, and he had brought a short piece of timber to place as a rest at her back, cushioned by his shoulder pack and the blanket.  After all his trouble she did not eat much.  The mistiness was still in her eyes, so after he had finished he took away the timber and made of the balsams a deep pillow for her, that she might lie restfully, with her head well up, while he smoked.  He did not want her to go to sleep.  He wanted to talk.  And he began by asking how she had so carelessly run away with only a pair of moccasins on her feet and no clothes but the thin garments she was wearing.