“It turn to camp,” said the squaw. “Maybe some white thief, so I tell you. Me tell Dan?”
“Wait,” answered the girl; and, kneeling down, she studied the slender outline of the foot attentively. “Any more tracks?”
“No more—only leaves stirred nearer to camp; he go that way.”
The full moon rose clear and warm in the east, while yet the sun’s light lingered over the wilderness. Beautiful flowers shone white and pink and yellow in the opaline light of the evening; and ’Tana mechanically plucked a few that touched her as she passed, but she gave little notice to their beauty. All her thought was on the slender footprint of the man in the woods, and her face looked troubled.
They walked on, looking to right and left in any nook where deep shadows lay, but never a sign could they see of aught that was human besides themselves, until they neared the springs again, when the squaw laid her hand on the arm of the girl.
“Dan,” she said, in her low, abrupt way.
The girl, looking up, saw him a little way ahead of them, standing there straight, strong, and surely to be trusted; yet her first impulse was to tell him nothing.
“Take the water and go,” she said to the Indian, and the woman disappeared like a mere wraith of a woman in the pale shadows. 174
“Don’t go so far next time when you want to pick flowers in the evening,” said Overton, as ’Tana came nearer to him. “You make me realize that I have nerves. If you had not come in sight the instant you did, I should have been after you.”
“But nothing will harm us; I am not afraid, and it is pretty in the woods now,” she answered lamely, and toyed with the flowers. But the touch of her fingers was nervous, and the same quality trembled in her voice. He noticed it and reaching out took her hand in his very gently, and yet with decision that forced her to look up at him.