Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps to the sunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried mosses and baked withered grasses that were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttered a cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched her sensitive skin.
"It is healing, too," continued Low; "a moccasin filled with it after a day on the trail makes you all right again."
But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
"Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?"
"I don't know; you forget I was a boy when I left them."
"And you're sure you never knew any?"
"None."
The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her feet up and down for several minutes among the grasses in the hollow; then, after a pause, said, "You are quite certain I am the first woman that ever touched this spring?"
"Not only the first woman, but the first human being, except myself."
"How nice!"