He swung off his pack and put down his gun. For a moment the girl stared at him with widening eyes. The fear went out of them slowly. Her hand unclenched, and suddenly she turned to the big grizzly and clasped her bared arms about the shaggy monster's neck.
"Tara, Tara, it isn't one of them!" she cried. "It isn't one of them—and we thought it was!"
She whirled on David with a suddenness that took his breath away. It was like the swift turning of a bird. He had never seen a movement so quick.
"Who are you?" she flung at him, as if she had not already heard his name. "Why are you here? What business have you going up there—to the Nest?"
"I don't like that bear," said David dubiously, as the grizzly made a slow movement toward him.
"Tara won't hurt you," she said. "Not unless you put your hands on me, and I scream. I've had him ever since he was a baby and he has never hurt any one yet. But—he will!" Her eyes glowed darkly again, and her voice had a strange, hard little note in it. "I've been ... training him," she added. "Tell me—why are you going to the Nest?"
It was a point-blank, determined question, with still a hint of suspicion in it; and her eyes, as she asked it, were the clearest, steadiest, bluest eyes he had ever looked into.
He was finding it hard to live up to what he had expected of himself. Many times he had thought of what he would say when he found this girl, if he ever did find her; but he had anticipated something a little more conventional, and had believed that it would be quite the easiest matter in the world to tell who he was, and why he had come, and to tell it all convincingly and understandably. He had not, in short, expected the sort of little person who stood there against her bear—a very difficult little person to approach easily and with assurance—half woman and half child, and beautifully wild. She was not disappointing. She was greatly appealing. When he surveyed her in a particularizing way, as he did swiftly, there was an exquisiteness about her that gave him pleasureable thrills. But it was all wild. Even her hair, an amazing glory of tangled curls, was wild in its disorder; she seemed palpitating with that wildness, like a fawn that had been run into a corner—no, not a fawn, but some beautiful creature that could and would fight desperately if need be. That was his impression. He was undergoing a smashing of his conceptions of this girl as he had visioned her from the picture, and a readjustment of her as she existed for him now. And he was not disappointed. He had never seen anything quite like this Marge O'Doone and her bear. O'Doone! His mind had harked back quickly, at her mention of that name, to the woman in the coach of the Transcontinental, the woman who was seeking a man by the name of Michael O'Doone. Of course the woman was her mother. Her name, too, must have been O'Doone.
Very slowly the girl detached herself from her bear, and came until she stood within three steps of David.
"Tara won't hurt you," she assured him again, "unless I scream. He would tear you to pieces, then."