“Great Caesar, you scared me! Thought it was the whole Blackfoot tribe.”
“You will be the better for something to eat,” she said simply, handing him the lunch basket. “Good-by.”
“Hold up!” he cried. But she was gone.
“Say, she's a regular—” He paused and thought for a moment. “She's an angel, that's what—and a mighty sight better than most of them. She's a—” He turned back to his watch, leaving his thought unspoken. In the presence of the greater passions words are woefully inadequate.
The Indian was still eating as ravenously as ever.
“He's filling up, I guess. He ought to be full soon at that rate. Wish he'd get his pipe agoing.”
In due time the Indian finished eating, rolled up the fragments carefully in a rag, and then proceeded to construct with the poles and brush which he had cut, a penthouse against the rock. At one end his little shelter thus constructed ran into a spruce tree whose thick branches reached right to the ground. When he had completed this shelter to his satisfaction he sat down again on the rock beside his smoldering fire and pulled out his pipe.
“Thanks be!” said the doctor to himself fervently. “Go on, old boy, hit her up.”
A pipe and then another the Indian smoked, then, taking his gun, blanket and pack, he crawled into his brush wigwam out of sight.
“There, you old beggar!” said the doctor with a sigh of relief. “You are safe for an hour or two, thank goodness. You had no sleep last night and you've got to make up for it now. Sleep tight, old boy. We'll give you a call.” The doctor hugged himself with supreme satisfaction and continued to smoke with his eye fixed upon the hole into which the Indian had disappeared.