For such walkers as they all were the distance they had to go was nothing. Soft afternoon lights were still lying peacefully beside the long afternoon shadows as they approached the little hut, and Sepp answered the colonel’s abortive attempt at a Jodel with one so long and complicated that it seemed as if he were taking that means to express all he should have liked to say in words. The spell broken, he turned about and asked:
“Also! what did the French people,”—he wouldn’t call them Herrschaft—“say to the gracious Fraulein’s splendid shot?”
Ruth stopped and looked absently at him, then flushed and recovered herself quickly. It was the first time she had remembered her stag.
“I fear,” said she, “that French people would disapprove a young lady’s shooting. I did not tell them.”
Sepp went on again with long strides. The four little black hoofs of the chamois stuck pitifully up out of the bag on his broad back. When he was well out of hearing he growled aloud:
“Hab’ ’s schon g’ wusst! Jesses, Marie and Josef! was is denn dös!”
That evening, when Rex and the Jaeger were fussing over the chamois’ beard and dainty horns inside the Hütte, Ruth and her father stood without, before the closed door. The skies were almost black, and full of stars. Through the wide fragrant stillness came up now and then a Jodel from some Bursch going to visit his Sennerin. A stamp, and a comfortable sigh, came at times from Nani’s cows in their stall below.
Ruth put both arms around her father’s neck and laid her head down on his shoulder.
“Tired, Daisy?”
“Yes, dear.”