"
"Running away!" he gasped. "How long...."
"Two days."
He understood now--her ragged moccasins, her frayed skirt, her tangled
hair, the look of exhaustion about her. It came upon him all at once
that she was standing unsteadily, swaying slightly like the slender stem
of a flower stirred by a breath of air, and that he had not noticed
these things because of the steadiness and clearness of her wonderful
eyes. He was at her side in an instant. He forgot the bear. His hand
seized hers--the one with the deep, red scratch on it--and drew her to a
flat rock a few steps away. She followed him, keeping her eyes on him in
a wondering sort of way. The grizzly's reddish eyes were on David. A few
yards away Baree was lying flat on his belly between two stones, his
eyes on the bear. It was a strange scene and rather weirdly incongruous.
David no longer sensed it. He still held the girl's hand as he seated
her on the rock, and he looked into her eyes, smiling confidently. She
was, after all, his little chum--the Girl who had been with him ever
since that first night's vision in Thoreau's cabin, and who had helped
him to win that great fight he had made; the girl who had cheered and
inspired him during many months, and whom he had come fifteen hundred
miles to see.
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