At the door he stopped short and looked into the hole under the potato-house.
Then his romance went out as the tide to the sea.
A woman at least thirty-five stood there. Her hair was red, her features hard, her face burned by the sun. Grim, square jaws set off her face. There was a line only to show where her lips met in deadly determination. She wore moccasins and leggins, a short skirt of deer skin and she held in her hand a rifle that had sent a dozen Indians to death in the twelve long hours she had held the little fort. Stuck in her belt were two good pistols. A thousand Comanches with arrows and antiquated guns could not have taken her.
“Oh!” she said, “but I’m glad to see you. Say, but I stood ’em off all right, didn’t I? It was awful—’specially last night, but the moon riz an’ saved me, for a Comanche with an arrow or a old gun is kinder techus ’bout a rifle. Is Pap safe?”
They told her he was.
“I tried to git the old fool to stay. I told him all hell couldn’t git us out o’ this hole, armed as we wus, lessen they come with bilin’ water,” she laughed, “but he got panicky an’ vamoosed on the only pony left. Dad allers was a gal.”
“Good gad,” cried the old hunter bluntly at last, “an’ is you the little gal he kip talkin’ ’bout?”
“Oh, he allers called me that,” she smiled.
“Well, you’re the gamest little gal I ever seed,” and he wrung her hand while the others followed suit. “An’ you’re our little gal now,” went on the old hunter, proudly, “an’ as I ain’t seed one like you since mine died years ago, I’d—I’d—I’d lak to kiss you jes onct for her,” he stammered.
“Oh, you shet up,” she said hotly. “D’ye think I stood off a lot o’ Comanches all night to be rewarded by kissin’ a old grizzly like you? But say,” she added, hesitating, and with a laugh, “I wouldn’t mind kissin’ that pretty little boy thar!”