yoke of arid unrealities.  The pale-haired woman who kept him with her miserliness of self, who intruded no sombre tragedy of loving, was well worth a trip across the foot-hills to see.  And yet, Judith reflected, it was the portion of her mother’s daughter to make of loving the whole business of life, even if she rebelled and fought against it as an accursed destiny.  It was in her inheritance to know and live for the wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses, to feel trembling joy and despair and frantic hope, that exacted its tribute hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and bitterness of her life, to have the same measureless capacity for sorrow that she had for loving, to have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love the mighty forces about her, to feel the reflection of all their moods in her heart, and, lastly, it was her destiny to be the daughter of a half-Sioux and a border adventurer, and to feel the counter influences of the two races make forever of her heart a battleground.

Her light feet scarcely touched the ground as she sped swiftly through all the network of the hills; and more than once her woman’s heart asked the question, “And, prithee, Judith, if from henceforth you are only to hold fellowship with the stars and have no part in the ways of men, why do you walk a day’s journey to catch a glimpse of a pale-haired woman?”

She knew the probable course of the wolf-hunt.  She had been on scores of them, galloped with Peter after the fleeing gray thing that swept along the ground like the nucleus of a whirling dust-devil.  At least she was sure of the place of their nooning—­a limpid stream that ran close to many young pine-trees.  Here was a pause in the rugged ascent, a level space of open green, thick with buffalo grass.  Many times had she been here with Peter, sometimes with many other people on the chase—­sometimes, and these occasions were enshrined in her memory, each with its own particular halo, with Peter alone; and they had fished for trout and cooked their supper on the grassy levels.  It was in Judith’s planning to arrive before the hunting-party, to hide among the thickets of scrub pine that grew along the steep cliffs and overlooked the grassy level, to take her fill of looking at the pale-haired girl and the hunters at their merrymaking, and, when she had seen, to steal back across the trail to the Daxes’.  They would not penetrate the thickets where she meant to hide, and, should they, she was prepared for that contingency, too.  She had brought with her a bright-colored shawl that she would throw over her head, and with the start of them she could outrun them all, even Peter.  Had she not outdistanced him easily, many times, in fun?  Through the tangle of tree-trunks that grew not far from the thicket, they would think she was but a poor Shoshone squaw lying in wait for the broken meat of the revellers.