He was awake with the summer dawn and the sun was beginning to tint up the big red mountain when they began the descent into the valley.  Before they started he loaned the girl his comb and single military brush, and for fifteen minutes sat watching her while she brushed the tangles out of her hair until it fell about her in a thick, waving splendour.  At the nape of her neck she tied it with a bit of string which he found for her, and after that, as they travelled downward, he observed how the rebellious tresses, shimmering and dancing about her, persisted in forming themselves into curls again.  In an hour they reached the valley, and for a few moments they sat down to rest, while Tara foraged among the rocks for marmots.  It was a wonderful valley into which they had come.  From where they sat, it was like an immense park.  Green slopes reached almost to the summits of the mountains, and to a point half way up these slopes—­the last timber line—­clumps of spruce and balsam trees were scattered over the green as if set there by hands of men.  Some of these timber patches were no larger than the decorative clumps in a city park, and others covered acres and tens of acres; and at the foot of the slopes on either side, like decorative fringes, were thin and unbroken lines of forest.  Between these two lines of forest lay the open valley of soft and undulating meadow, dotted with its purplish bosks of buffalo-, willow-, and mountain-sage, its green coppices of wild rose and thorn, and its clumps of trees.  In the hollow of the valley ran a stream.

And this was her home!  She was telling him about it as they sat there, and he listened to her, and watched her bird-like movements, without breaking in to ask questions which the night had shaped in his mind.  She pointed out gray summits on which she had stood.  Off there, just visible in the gray mist of early sunshine, was the mountain where she had found Tara five years ago—­a tiny cub who must have lost his mother.  Perhaps the Indians had killed her.  And that long, rock-strewn slide, so steep in places that he shuddered when he thought of what she had done, was where she and Tara had climbed over the range in their flight.  She chose the rocks so that Tara would leave no trail.  He regarded that slide as conclusive evidence of the very definite resolution that must have inspired her.  A fit of girlish temper would not have taken her up that rock slide, and in the night.  He thought it time to speak of what was weighing upon his mind.

“Listen to me, Marge,” he said, pointing toward the red mountain ahead of them.  “Off there, you say, is the Nest.  What are we going to do when we arrive there?”

The little lines gathered between her eyes again as she looked at him.

“Why—­tell them,” she said.

“Tell them what?”

“That you’ve come for me, and that we’re going away, Sakewawin.”

“And if they object?  If Brokaw and Hauck say you cannot go?”