He drew back from her with a long, indrawn breath, and reached for his hat.
"Yes," he said.
It was the first time he had spoken to her, and he did so with his eyes still on her face and that curious expression in them. He was half kneeling, his body drawn back and away from her, but his eyes unchanging in their steadiness. As the girl lay there full length on the mountain grass, only her head raised and turned toward him, she might have been a Lamia from their attitudes and his expression.
"It seemed long to wait," she continued, turning her eyes toward Mowitza, who had quietly come near them; "but I was not afraid. I knew you would find me. I would have walked back to meet you if the fall had not made me so dizzy. I am decidedly wake kloshe" (no good); and she smiled as she reached out her hand to him, and he helped her rise to her feet. "I feel all jolted to pieces," she said, taking a few steps toward a tree against which she leaned. "And even now that you have come, I don't know how I am to get to camp."
"I will get you there," he answered briefly. "Did the mare throw you?"
"I am not sure what she did," answered the girl. "She fell, I think, and I fell with her, and when I could see trees instead of stars she had recovered and disappeared. Oh! Did you see the bear?"
"Yes, and shot her. She might have killed you when her temper was up over that cub. How did it happen?"
Each of them was a little easier in speech than at first, and she told him as well as she could of the episode, and her own inability to check Betty. And he told her of the fright of the others, and their anxiety, and that he had sent them straight ahead to camp, while he struck into the timber where Betty had left the old trail.
"I promised them to have word of you soon," he added; "and I reckon they'll be mighty glad you can take the word yourself—it's more than they expected. She might have killed you."
His tone and repetition of the words showed the fear that had been uppermost in his thoughts.