“Who are you?” demanded the tall man of me sternly; but still I did not answer.  The girl’s hands tugged at his shoulders.  “It is my friend,” she said.  “He saved me.  It is Mr. John Cowles, father, of the Virginia Cowles family.  He has come to see you—­” But he did not hear her, or show that he heard.  His arm about her, supporting her as she limped, he turned back down the valley, and we others followed slowly.

Presently he came to the rude shelter which had been our home.  Without speaking he walked about the camp, pushed open the door of the little ragged tepee and looked within.  The floor was very narrow.  There was one meager bed of hides.  There was one fire.

“Come with me,” he said at length to me.  And so I followed him apart, where a little thicket gave us more privacy.

His was a strong face, keen under heavy gray brows, with hair that rose stiff and gray over a high forehead, so that he seemed like some Osage chief, taller by a third than most men, and naturally a commander among others.

“You are John Cowles, sir, then?” he said to me at length, quietly.  “Lieutenant Belknap told me something of this when he came in with his men from the East.”  I nodded and waited.

“Are you aware, sir, of the seriousness of what you have done?” he broke out.  “Why did you not come on to the settlements?  What reason was there for you not coming back at once to the valley of the Platte—­here you are, a hundred miles out of your way, where a man of any intelligence, it seems to me, would naturally have turned back to the great trail.  Hundreds of wagons pass there every day.  There is a stage line with daily coaches, stations, houses.  A telegraph line runs from one end of the valley to the other.  You could not have missed all this had you struck south.  A fool would have known that.  But you took my girl—­” he choked up, and pointed to me, ragged and uncouth.

“Good God!  Colonel Meriwether,” I cried out at length, “you are not regretting that I brought her through?”

“Almost, sir,” he said, setting his lips together.  “Almost!”

“Do you regret then that she brought me through—­that I owe my life to her?”

“Almost, sir,” he repeated.  “I almost regret it.”

“Then go back—­leave us—­report us dead!” I broke out, savagely.  It was moments before I could accept this old life again offered me.

“She is a splendid girl, a noble being,” I said to him, slowly, at last.  “She saved me when I was sick and unable to travel.  There is nothing I could do that would pay the debt I owe to her.  She is a noble woman, a princess among women, body and soul.”

“She is like her mother,” said he, quietly.  “She was too good for this.  Sir, you have done my family a grievous wrong.  You have ruined my daughter’s life.”

Now at last I could talk.  I struck my hand hard on his shoulder and looked him full in the eye.  “Colonel Meriwether,” I said to him, “I am ashamed of you.”