Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer history of the United States came back to Mary.  In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all explorers, from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were unfailingly depicted in the attitude of salesmen displaying squares of cloth to savages apparently in urgent need of them.

“How stupid of me not to remember Father Marquette concluding negotiations with a necklace!”

“Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty from Pere Marquette, and there you are!”

“You are so splendid!” said Mary, impulsively, remembering Judith’s own sorrows and the smiling fortitude with which she kept them hidden.  “You make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been whining.”

Judith looked towards the mountains a long time without speaking.

“When you know them well, they whisper great things that little folk can’t take away.”

She turned back towards camp, walking lightly, with head thrown back.  Mary watched her.  Yes, the mountains might have admitted her to their company.

XV

The Wolf-hunt

Judith awakened with all the starry infinitude of sky for a canopy.  In the distance loomed the foot-hills, watchful sentinels of her slumbers; and, sloping gently away from them, rolled the plain, like some smooth, dark sea flowing deep and silently.  Judith, a solitary figure adrift in that still ocean of space, sat up and watched the stars fade and saw the young day peer timorously at the world that lay before it.  Her mind, refreshed by long hours of dreamless sleep, turned to the problem of impending things, serenely contemplative.  The passing of many mornings and many peoples had the mountains seen as the wreathed mists came and went about their brows, and to all who knew the value of the gift they gave their great company, and to such as could hear, they told their great secrets.  Judith’s prayer was an outflowing of soul to the great forces about her, a wish to be in harmony with them, to remember her kinship, to keep some measure of their serenity in the press of burdens.  The way of the Indian was ever her way when circumstance raised no barriers; the four walls of a house were a prison to her after the days lengthened and the summer nights grew warm.  To the infinite disapproval of that custodian of propriety, Mrs. Dax, she would make her bed beneath the stars, night after night, and bathe in the cold, clear waters of the stream that purled from the white-capped crest of the mountains.

“Nasty Injun ways!” scoffed Leander’s masterful lady, consciously superior from the intrenchment of her stuffy bedroom, that boasted crochet-work on the backs of the chairs and a scant lace curtain at its solitary window.