With deepening darkness, his eyes grew heavier.  He closed them for a few moments at a time; and each time the interval was longer, and it took greater effort to force himself into wakefulness.  Finally he slept.  But he was still subconsciously on guard, and an hour later that consciousness was beating and pounding within him, urging him to awake.  He sat up with a start and gripped his rifle.  An owl was hooting—­softly, very softly.  There were four notes.  He answered, and a little later MacDonald came like a shadow out of the gloom.  Aldous advanced to meet him, and he noticed that over the eastern mountains there was a break of gray.

“It’s after three, Johnny,” MacDonald greeted him.  “Build a fire and get breakfast.  Tell Joanne I’m out after another sheep.  Until it’s good an’ light I’m going to watch from that clump of timber up there.  In half an hour it’ll be dawn.”

He moved toward the timber, and Aldous set about building a fire.  He was careful not to awaken Joanne.  The fire was crackling cheerily when he went to the lake for water.  Returning he saw the faint glow of candlelight in Joanne’s tepee.  Five minutes later she appeared, and all thought of danger, and the discomfort of his sleepless night, passed from him at sight of her.  Her eyes were still a little misty with sleep when he took her in his arms and kissed her, but she was deliciously alive, and glad, and happy.  In one hand she had brought a brush and in the other a comb.

“You slept like a log,” he cried happily.  “It can’t be that you had very bad dreams, little wife?”

“I had a beautiful dream, John,” she laughed softly, and the colour flooded up into her face.

She unplaited the thick silken strands of her braid and began brushing her hair in the firelight, while Aldous sliced the bacon.  Some of the slices were thick, and some were thin, for he could not keep his eyes from her as she stood there like a goddess, buried almost to her knees in that wondrous mantle.  He found himself whistling with a very light heart as she braided her hair, and afterward plunged her face in a bath of cold water he had brought from the lake.  From that bath she emerged like a glowing Naiad.  Her eyes sparkled.  Her cheeks were pink and her lips full and red.  Damp little tendrils of hair clung adorably about her face and neck.  For another full minute Aldous paused in his labours, and he wondered if MacDonald was watching them from the clump of timber.  The bacon was sputtering when Joanne ran to it and rescued it from burning.

Dawn followed quickly after that first break of day in the east, but not until one could see a full rifle-shot away did MacDonald return to the camp.  Breakfast was waiting, and as soon as he had finished the old hunter went after the horses.  It was five o’clock, and bars of the sun were shooting over the tops of the mountains when once more they were in the saddle and on their way.