Out in the starlight she would have seen his drooping head, and his words would have had a different meaning for her.  He was fighting with himself desperately, and in his heart was a great fear.  He must be badly hurt, he thought.  There came to him a distorted but vivid vision of an Indian hurt in the head, whom he and Father Roland had tried to save.  Without a surgeon it had been impossible.  The Indian had died, and he had had those same spells of sickness, the sickness that was creeping over him again in spite of his efforts to fight it off.  He had no very clear notion of the movement of Tara’s body under him, but he knew that he was holding on grimly, and that every little while the Girl called back to him, and he replied.  Then came the time when he failed to answer, and for a space the rocking motion under him ceased and the Girl’s voice was very near to him.  Afterward motion resumed.  It seemed to him that he was travelling a great distance.  Altogether too far without a halt for sleep, or at least a rest.  He was conscious of a desire to voice protest—­and all the time his fingers were clasped in Tara’a mane in a sort of death grip.

In her breast Marge’s heart was beating like a hunted thing, and over and over again she sobbed out a broken prayer as she guided Tara and his burden through the night.  From the forest into the starlit open; from the open into the thick gloom of forest again—­into and out of starlight and darkness, following that trail down the valley.  She was no longer thinking of the rock mountain, for it would be impossible now to climb over the range into the other valley.  She was heading for a cabin.  An old and abandoned cabin, where they could hide.  She tried to tell David about it, many days after they had begun that journey it seemed to him.

“Only a little longer, Sakewawin,” she cried, with her arm about him and her lips close to his bent head.  “Only a little longer!  They will not think to search for us there, and you can sleep—­sleep....”

Her voice drifted away from him like a low murmur in the tree tops—­and his fingers still clung in that death-grip in the mane at Tara’s neck.

And still many other days later they came to the cabin.  It was amazing to him that the Girl should say: 

“We are only five miles from the Nest, Sakewawin, but they will not hunt for us here.  They will think we have gone farther—­or over the mountains!”

She was putting cold water to his face, and now that there was no longer the rolling motion under him he was not quite so dizzy.  She had unrolled the bundle and had spread out a blanket, and when he stretched himself out on this a sense of vast relief came over him.  In his confused consciousness two or three things stood out with rather odd clearness before he closed his eyes, and the last was a vision of the Girl’s face bending over him, and of her starry eyes looking down at him, and of her voice urging him gently: