barks of interrogation. A herd of deer lifted their horns against
the horizon, then suddenly bounded away, racing like shadows toward
the lowlands of Red River. On the domelike summit of Mount Welsh,
a mile away, a mountain-lion showed his sinuous form against the sky
seven hundred feet in air. And from the mountainside near at hand
stared from among the thick greenery of a cedar, the face of an
Indian whose black hair was adorned by a single red feather.

Within the wagon, unconscious of all, in strange fellowship, lay
the living and the dead.



CHAPTER IV
AN UNWONTED PRAYER


When Willock started up from the mattress in the covered wagon, the
sun had set. Every object, however, was clearly defined in the
first glow of the long August twilight, and it needed but a glance
to recall the events that had brought him to seek shelter and
slumber beside the dead woman. He sat up suddenly, staring from
under his long black hair as it fell about his eyes. Accustomed as
he was to deeds of violence, even to the sight of men weltering in
their life's blood, he was strangely moved by that rigid form with
the thin arms folded over the breast, by that white cloth concealing
face and hair. A long keen examination of the prairie assured him
that no human being was between him and the horizon. He turned
again toward the woman. He felt an overpowering desire to look on
her face.