He shook his head.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you, my child."
Her eyes turned on him suddenly.
"Why do you call me that—a child?"
"Because you're not a woman; because you're so very, very young, and I'm so very old," he laughed.
For a long time after that she was silent as they travelled steadily toward the red mountain.
They ate their dinner in the sombre shadow of it. Most of the afternoon Marge rode her bear. It was sundown when they stopped for their last meal. The Nest was still three miles farther on, and the stars were shining brilliantly before they came to the little, wooded plain in the edge of which Hauck had hidden away his place of trade. When they were some hundred yards away they came over a knoll and David saw the glow of fires. The girl stopped suddenly and her hand caught his arm. He counted four of those fires in the open. A fifth glowed faintly, as if back in timber. Sounds came to them—the slow, hollow booming of a tom-tom, and voices. They could see shadows moving. The girl's fingers were pinching David's arm.
"The Indians have come in," she whispered.
There was a thrill of uneasiness in her words. It was not fear. He could see that she was puzzled, and that she had not expected to find fires or those moving shadows. Her eyes were steady and shining as she looked at him. It seemed to him that she had grown taller, and more like a woman, as they stood there. Something in her face made him ask:
"Why have they come?"