hanging strips of bark which had fallen across it. Suddenly one of these
strips was pushed aside, and a young man leaped lightly down.

But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiarities of dress, he
was of a grace so unusual and unconventional that he might have passed
for a faun who was quitting his ancestral home. He stepped to the side
of the bear with a light elastic movement that was as unlike customary
progression as his face and figure were unlike the ordinary types
of humanity. Even as he leaned upon his rifle, looking down at the
prostrate animal, he unconsciously fell into an attitude that in any
other mortal would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesque
and unstudied relaxation of perfect symmetry.

"Hallo, Mister!"

He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he did not
otherwise change his attitude. Stepping from behind the tree, the woman
of the preceding night stood before him. Her hands were free except for
a thong of the riata, which was still knotted around one wrist, the end
of the thong having been torn or burnt away. Her eyes were bloodshot,
and her hair hung over her shoulders in one long black braid.

"I reckoned all along it was YOU who shot the bear," she said; "at least
some one hiding yer," and she indicated the hollow tree with her hand.
"It wasn't no chance shot." Observing that the young man, either from
misconception or indifference, did not seem to comprehend her, she
added, "We came by here, last night, a minute after you fired."

"Oh, that was YOU kicked up such a row, was it?" said the young man,
with a shade of interest.