“It’s such a bother to take off moccasins and leggings,” she would say.

They rode horseback up and down the trails that Slingerland assured them were safe.  And it was the cowboy Larry who lent his horse and taught her a flying mount; he said she would make a rider.

In the afternoons they would climb the high ridge, and on the summit sit in the long whitening grass and gaze out over the dim and purple vastness of the plains.  In the twilight they walked under the pines.  When night set in and the air grew cold they would watch the ruddy fire on the hearth and see pictures of the future there, and feel a warmth on hand and cheek that was not all from the cheerful blaze.

Neale found it strange to realize how his attachment for Larry had changed to love.  All Neale’s spiritual being was undergoing a great and vital change, but this was not the reason he loved Larry.  It was because of Allie.  The cowboy was a Texan and he had inherited the Southerner’s fine and chivalric regard for women.  Neale never knew whether Larry had ever had a sister or a sweetheart or a girl friend.  But at sight Larry had become Allie’s own; not a brother or a friend or a lover, but something bigger and higher.  The man expanded under her smiles, her teasing, her playfulness, her affection.  Neale had no pang in divining the love Larry bore Allie.  Drifter, cowboy, gun-thrower, man-killer, whatever he had been, the light of this girl’s beautiful eyes, her voice, her touch, had worked the last marvel in man—­forgetfulness of self.  And so Neale loved him.

It made Neale quake inwardly to think of the change being wrought in himself.  It made him thoughtful of many things.  There was much in life utterly new to him.  He had listened to a moan in his keen ear; he had felt a call of something helpless; he had found a gleam of chestnut hair; he had stirred two other men to help him befriend a poor, broken-hearted, half-crazed orphan girl.  And, lo! the world had changed, his friends had grown happier in their unloved lives, a strange strength had come to him, and, sweetest, most wonderful of all, in the place of the helpless and miserable waif appeared a woman, lovely of face and form, with only a ghost of sadness haunting her eyes, a woman adorable and bright, with the magic of love on her lips.

October came.  In the early morning and late afternoon a keen cold breath hung in the air.  Slingerland talked of a good prospect for fur.  He chopped great stores of wood.  Larry climbed the hills with his rifle.  Neale walked the trails hand in hand with Allie.

He had never sought to induce her to speak of her past, though at times the evidence of refinement and education and mystery around her made strong appeal to him.  She could, tell her story whenever she liked or never—­it did not greatly matter.

Then,—­one day, quite naturally, but with a shame she did not try to conceal, she confided to him part of the story her mother had told her that dark night when the Sioux were creeping upon the caravan.