"You stand all this nobly," I commented presently.
"Ah, you men—I love you, you men!" She said it suddenly and with perfect sincerity. "I love you all—you are so strong, so full of the desire to live, to win. It is wonderful, wonderful! Just look at those poor boys there—some of them are dying, almost, but they won't whimper. It is wonderful."
"It is the Plains," I said. "They have simply learned how little a thing is life."
"Yet it is sweet," she said.
"But for you, I see that you have changed again."
She spread her leather skirt down with her hands, as though to make it longer, and looked contemplatively at the fringed leggins below.
"You were four different women," I mused, "and now you are another, quite another."
At this she frowned a bit, and rose. "You are not to talk," she said, "nor to think that you are well; because you are not. I must go and see the others."
I lay back against the wagon bed, wondering in which garb she had been most beautiful—the filmy ball dress and the mocking mask, the gray gown and veil of the day after, the thin drapery of her hasty flight in the night, her half conventional costume of the day before—or this, the garb of some primeval woman. I knew I could never forget her again. The thought gave me pain, and perhaps this showed on my face, for my eyes followed her so that presently she turned and came back to me.
"Does the wound hurt you?" she asked. "Are you in pain?"