He tried not to look too closely, but the sight, after a moment, fascinated him.  If it had not been for the difference in their size he could not have told which was Hauck and which was Brokaw, for even on Hauck, Tara had vented his rage after Baree had killed him.  Neither bore very much the semblance of a man just now—­it seemed incredible that claw and fang could have worked such destruction, and he went suddenly back to the door to see that the Girl was not following him.  Then he looked again.  Henry lay at his feet across the fallen saplings of the battered door, his head twisted completely under him—­or gone.  It was Henry’s rifle he picked up.  He searched for cartridges then.  It was a sickening task.  He found nearly fifty of them on the three, and went out with the pack and the rifle.  He put the pack over his shoulders before he returned to the rock, and paused only for a moment, when he rejoined the Girl.  With her hand in his he struck down into the valley.

“A great justice has overtaken them,” he said, and that was all he told her about the cabin, and she asked him no questions.

At the edge of the green meadows they stopped where a trickle of water from the mountain tops had formed a deep pool.  David followed this trickle a little up the coulee it had worn in the course of ages, found a sheltered spot, and stripped himself.  To the waist he was covered with the stain and grime of battle.  In the open pool Marge bathed her face and arms, and then sat down to finish her toilet with David’s comb and brush.  When he returned to her she was a radiant glory, hidden to her waist in the gold and brown fires of her disentangled hair.  It was wonderful.  He stood a step off and looked at her, his heart filled with a wonderful joy, his lips silent.  The thought surged upon him now in an overmastering moment of exultation that she belonged to him, not for to-day, or to-morrow, but for all time; that the mountains had given her to him; that among the flowers and the wild things that “great, good God,” of whom Father Roland had spoken so often, had created her for him; and that she had been waiting for him here, pure as the wild violets under his feet.  She did not see him for a space, and he watched her as she ran out her glowing tresses under the strokes of his brush.

And once—­ages ago it seemed to him now—­he had thought that another woman was beautiful, and that another woman’s glory was her hair!  He felt his heart singing.  She had not been like this.  No.  Worlds separated those two—­that woman and this God-crowned little mountain flower who had come into his heart like the breath of a new life, opening for him new visions that reached even beyond the blue skies.  And he wondered that she should love him.  She looked up suddenly and saw him standing there.  Love?  Had he in all his life dreamed of the look that was in her face now?  It made his heart choke him.  He held open his arms, silently,