A third time the
order of the mysterious footprints in the sand was changed--and the
grizzly was now following the boy, obliterating almost entirely the
indentures in the sand of his small, moccasined feet. He wondered
whether it was possible that his eyes had gone bad on him, or that his
mind had slipped out of its normal groove and was tricking him with
weirdly absurd hallucinations. So what happened in almost that same
breath did not startle him as it might otherwise have done. It was for a
brief moment simply another assurance of his insanity; and if the
mountains had suddenly turned over and balanced themselves on their
peaks their gymnastics would not have frozen him into a more speechless
stupidity than did the Girl who rose before him just then, not twenty
paces away. She had emerged like an apparition from behind a great
boulder--a little older, a little taller, a bit wilder than she had
seemed to him in the picture, but with that same glorious hair sweeping
about her, and that same questioning look in her eyes as she stared at
him. Her hands were in that same way at her side, too, as if she were on
the point of running away from him. He tried to speak. He believed,
afterward, that he even made an effort to hold out his arms.
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