"Out, somewhere," returned the girl comprehensively. She did not add that he had been out all night, and Jim was too much interested with the prospect of breakfast to be very curious.
He had it, as he had the bed—all to himself. Miss Hardy was not hungry, for a wonder, and Talapa disappeared after it was placed on the table. The girl asked Jim if that was Indian etiquette, but Jim didn't know what etiquette was, so he couldn't tell.
Through that long vigil of the night there had returned to the girl much of her light, ironical manner; but the mockery was more of herself and her own emotions than aught else, for when Genesee brought the horses to the door and she looked in his face, any thought of jesting with him was impossible; the signs of a storm were on him as they were on the mountains in the morning light.
"I will guide you back to the home trail," he said as he held Betty at the door for her to mount.
"Go in and get some breakfast," was all the answer she made him. But he shook his head, and reached his hand to help her.
"What's the matter with everyone this morning?" asked Jim. "There hasn't been a bite of breakfast eaten only what I got away with myself."
Genesee glanced in at the table. "Would you eat nothing because it was mine?" he asked in a low tone.
"I did not because I could not," she said in the same tone; and then added, good-humoredly: "Despite Jim's belief in my appetite, it does go back on me sometimes—and this is one of the times. It's too early in the morning for breakfast. Are you going with us on foot?" as she noticed Mowitza, unsaddled, grazing about the green turf at the edge of the timber.
"Yes," he answered, "I have not far to go."
She slipped past him, and gathering her dress up from the wet grass walked over to where Mowitza browsed. The beautiful mare raised her head and came over the grass with long, light steps, as if recognizing the low call of her visitor; and resting her head on the girl's shoulder, there seemed to be a conversation between them perfectly satisfactory to each; while Mowitza's owner stood looking at them with a world of conflicting emotions in his face.