as she rose to her feet, and she came to him in all that burnished glory of her unbound hair; and he held her close in his arms, kissing her soft lips, her flushed cheeks, her blue eyes, the warm sweetness of her hair.  And her lips kissed him.  He looked out over the valley.  His eyes were open to its beauty, but he did not see; a vision was rising before him, and his soul was breathing a prayer of gratitude to the Missioner’s God, to the God of the totem-worshippers over the ranges, to the God of all things.  It may be that the Girl sensed his voiceless exaltation, for up through the soft billows of her hair that lay crumpled on his breast she whispered: 

“You love me a great deal, my Sakewawin?”

“More than life,” he replied.

Her voice roused him.  For a few moments he had forgotten the cabin, had forgotten that Brokaw and Hauck had existed, and that they were now dead.  He held her back from him, looking into her face out of which all fear and horror had gone in its great happiness; a face filled with the joyous colour sent surging there by the wild beating of her heart, eyes confessing their adoration without shame, without concealment, without a droop of the long lashes behind which they might have hidden.  It was wonderful, that love shining straight out of their blue, marvellous depths!

“We must go now,” he said, forcing himself to break the spell.  “Two have escaped, Marge.  It is possible, if there are others at the Nest....”

His words brought her back to the thing they had passed through.  She glanced in a startled way over the valley, then shook her head.

“There are two others,” she said.  “But they will not follow us, Sakewawin.  If they should, we shall be over the mountain.”

She braided her hair as he adjusted his pack.  His heart was like a boy’s.  He laughed at her in joyous disapproval.

“I like to see it—­unbound,” he said.  “It is beautiful.  Glorious.”

It seemed to him that all the blood in her body leaped into her face at his words.

“Then—­I will leave it that way,” she cried softly, her words trembling with happiness and her fingers working swiftly in the silken plaits of her braid.  Unconfined, her hair shimmered about her again.  And then, as they were about to set off, she ran up to him with a little cry, and without touching him with her hands raised her face to his.

“Kiss me,” she said.  “Kiss me, my Sakewawin!”

* * * * *

It was noon when they stood under the topmost crags of the southward range, and under them they saw once more the green valley, with its silvery stream, in which they had met that first day beside the great rock.  It seemed to them both a long time ago, and the valley was like a friend smiling up at them its welcome and its gladness that they had at last returned.  Its drone of running waters, the whispering music of the air, and the piping cries of the marmots sunning themselves far below, came up to them faintly as they rested, and as the Girl sat in the circle of David’s arm, with her head against his breast, she pointed off through the blue haze miles to the eastward.