do well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possible
until afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, but
some one might miss it and stray over here. You're quite safe if you're
careful, and stand by the tree. You can build a fire here," he stepped
under the chimney-like opening, "without its being noticed. Even the
smoke is lost and cannot be seen so high."
The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it had
on hers. She looked at him intently.
"You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don't you?" she said,
with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its quality; "but I
don't see how you pick up a living by it in the Carquinez Woods. So
you're going, are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by."
"Good-by!" He leaped from the opening.
"I say, pardner!"
He turned a little impatiently. She had knelt down at the entrance, so
as to be nearer his level, and was holding out her hand. But he did not
notice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
"If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?"
He smiled. "Don't wait to hear."
"But suppose _I_ wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?"
He hesitated. "Call me--Lo."
"Lo, the poor Indian?" [The first word of Pope's familiar apostrophe is
humorously used in the far West as a distinguishing title for the
Indian.]
"Exactly."
It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young man's
height, supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular gravity of
demeanor there was a refined, aboriginal suggestion. He did not look
like any Indian she had ever seen, but rather as a youthful chief might
have looked. There was a further suggestion in his fringed buckskin
shirt and moccasins; but before she could utter the half-sarcastic
comment that rose to her lips he had glided noiselessly away, even as
an Indian might have done.
She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity,
dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance. Yet this did not
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