The Indian woman had taken off her shoes, so she came quite noiselessly and stood at the door of the hut.
She was puzzled beyond understanding by what must have happened to her. But she was not frightened. For Bettina was not made nervous or unhappy by the circumstances that would have alarmed most girls, but by little ordinary things which would have affected some girls not at all.
Now the beauty and the strangeness of the scene before her filled her with an emotion that was part pleasure and part pain. The evening was so beautiful. Never had she seen such a glory of color in the sky, and the Indian woman and the youth outside the door were like sentinels of some past age.
Curiously it was Bettina who recognized having seen her rescuer before. He had not known her as the girl whom he had met on the train coming west in all the distance he had carried her to Nampu’s hut. But, then, Bettina’s eyes were closed, her face smeared with blood and dirt, and she was wearing a costume that seemed strange to the young man. It was in a way like an Indian girl’s and yet oddly different. For Bettina was wearing only a part of her Camp Fire costume—the riding trousers and boots being an original departure—because of the unusual circumstances of their present camp fire life in Arizona.
As soon as she walked toward him the Indian got up and stood as erect as he had that day of their first odd meeting. But this second time was far more interesting.
One could not have mistaken him for any other nation than his own at this hour.
Still he showed no sign of ever having seen Bettina before until she put out her hand.
“I have something to be grateful to you for; I am not sure just how grateful I should be,” she began. “But I am glad that it is some one I have met before who has helped me. Now will you be good enough to tell me how I can manage to get back to my friends. We are camping at one end of the Gardener’s ranch near the neighborhood of Cottonwood Creek. Is there any way I could drive back?” Bettina smiled. “I am perfectly all right, only I do feel a little weak and tired. Yet my friends will be so uncomfortable not to know what has become of me. You remember meeting Mrs. Burton, don’t you?”
“Yes,” the young man answered.
Nampu grunted again.