It would be good to know her, and walk beside her in the tree aisles.  All manner of delectable possibilities occurred to him.  But all at once he checked his dreams with an iron will.

There must be no thought of women in his life—­for now.  He still had his way to make.  A few hours more would find him plunging deeper into the forest, perhaps never to see her again.  He felt an all-pervading sense of regret.

“There’s nothing I can say—­to thank you,” the girl was murmuring.  “I never saw anything like it; it was just as if the wolf understood every word you said.”

“Old Hiram had him pretty well trained, I suspect.”  The man’s eyes fell to the shaggy form at his feet.  “I’m glad I happened along Miss—­”

“Miss Neilson,” the girl prompted him.  “Beatrice Neilson.  I live here.”

Neilson!  His mind seemed to leap and catch at the name.  Just that day he had heard it from the lips of the merchant.  And this was the house next door where dwelt his fellow traveler for the morrow.

“Then it’s your father—­or brother—­who’s going to the Yuga—­”

“No,” the girl answered doubtfully.  “My father is already there.  I’m here alone—­”

Then the gray eyes lighted and a smile broke about Ben’s lips.  Few times in his life had he smiled in quite this vivid way.

“Then it’s you,” he exulted, “who is going to be my fellow traveler to-morrow!”

XI

Ben found, rather as he had expected, that the girl was not at all embarrassed by the knowledge that they were to have a lonely all-day ride together.  She looked at the matter from a perfectly natural and wholesome point of view, and she could see nothing in it amiss or improper.  The girls of the frontier rarely feel the need of chaperones.  Their womanhood comes early, and the open places and the fresh-life-giving air they breathe give them a healthy confidence in their ability to take care of themselves.  Beatrice had a pistol, and she could shoot it like a man.  She loved the solitude of the forest, but she also knew it was good to hear the sound of a human voice when journeying the lonely trails.

The frontier had also taught her to judge men.  Here foregathered many types, strong-thewed frontiersmen whose reverence for women surpassed, perhaps, that of any other class of men on earth, as well as the most villainous renegades, brutish offspring of the wilds, but she knew them apart.  She realized from the first that this tall woodsman would have only kindness and respect for her; and that he was to be trusted even in those lonely forest depths beyond Spruce Pass.

Ben knew the wild beasts of the field better than he knew women, so her actual reception of the plan was lost to him.  He felt that she was not displeased:  in reality the delight and anticipation she felt were beyond any power of hers to tell.  She had been tremendously thrilled and impressed by his dominance over the wolf.  She liked his bright, steady, friendly eyes; because she was a woods girl her heart leaped at the sight of his upright, powerful body; but most of all she felt that he was very near indeed to an ideal come true, a man of terrific strength and prowess yet not without those traits that women love best in men,—­courage and character and gentleness.