Of course, all the simple duties of our life now devolved upon myself.  I must hunt, and keep the camp, and cook, and bring the fuel; so that much of the time I was by necessity away from her.  Feverishly I explored all our little valley and exulted that here nature was so kind to us.  I trapped hares in little runways.  I made me a bow and some arrows, and very often I killed stupid grouse with these or even with stones or sticks, as they sat in the trees; and in bark baskets that I made I brought home many berries, now beginning to ripen fully.  Roots and bulbs as I found them I experimented with, though not with much success.  Occasionally I found fungi which made food.  Flowers also I brought to her, flowers of the early autumn, because now the snows were beginning to come down lower on the mountains.  In two months winter would be upon us.  In one month we would have snow in the valley.

The little pile of white stones at her side again grew, slowly, slowly.  Letter by letter her name grew invisible form on the scroll of our covenant—­her name, already written, and more deeply, on my heart.  On the fifth week she called once more for her charcoal pen, and signed the last letter of her Christian name!

“See, there,” she said, “it is all my girl name, E-l-l-e-n.”  I looked at it, her hand in mine.

“‘Ellen!’” I murmured.  “It is signature enough, because you are the only Ellen in the world.”  But she put away my hand gently and said, “Wait.”

She asked me now to get her some sort of cut branch for a crutch, saying she was going to walk.  And walk she did, though resting her foot very little on the ground.  After that, daily she went farther and farther, watched me as I guddled for trout in the stream, aided me as I picked berries in the thickets, helped me with the deer I brought into camp.

“You are very good to me,” she said, “and you hunt well.  You work.  You are a man, John Cowles.  I love you.”

[Illustration:  ‘OUT THAR IN CALIFORNY THE HILLS ARE FULL OF GOLD’]

But hearing words so sweet as these to me, still I did not tell her what secret was in my soul.  Each day I said to myself that presently she would be strong enough to bear it, and that then I would tell her.  Each day that other world seemed vaguer and farther away.  But each day passed and I could not speak.  Each day it seemed less worth while to speak.  Now I could not endure the thought of losing her.  I say that I could not.  Let none judge me too harshly who have not known the full measure of this world and that.

There was much sign of bears in our thickets, and I warned her not to go out alone after berries where these long-footed beasts now fed regularly.  Sometimes we went there together, with our vessels of bark, and filled them slowly, as she hobbled along.  Our little dog was now always with us, having become far more tamed and docile with us than is ever the case of an Indian dog in savagery.  One day we wandered in a dense berry thicket, out of which rose here and there chokecherry trees, and we began to gather some of these sour fruits for use in the pemmican which we planned to manufacture.  All at once we came to a spot where the cherry trees were torn down, pulled over, ripped up by the roots.  The torn earth was very fresh, and I knew that the bear that had done the work could not be far away.