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She took the apron from about his shoulders, and held it so that he could see the result of her work. He looked up, smiling. "Thank you, Melisse. Do you remember when you last cut my hair?" "Yes it was over on the mountain. We had taken the scissors along for cutting bakneesh, and you looked so like a wild Indian that I made you sit on a rock and let me trim it."
Out of the earth began to spring tips of green. The bakneesh vine glistened redder each day, the poplar buds began to split, and in the sunniest spots, between the rocks of the ridges the little white snow-flowers began to give a final proof that spring had come. For the first of those two weeks Gray Wolf hunted frequently with Kazan. They did not go far.
He did not travel fast, for to him spring was the most beautiful of all seasons in the wilderness. It was underfoot and overhead now. The snow-floods were singing between the ridges and gathering in the hollows. The poplar buds were swollen almost to the bursting point, and the bakneesh vines were as red as blood with the glow of new life.
They had come up to the top of the ridge on which he had fought the missionary, to gather red sprigs of the bakneesh for the festival that they were to have in the cabin that night. High up on the face of a jagged rock, Jan saw a bit of the crimson vine thrusting itself out into the sun, and, with Melisse laughing and encouraging him from below, he climbed up until he had secured it.
She turned, so that he saw the cluster of soft curls that fell upon her shoulder, with sprigs of bakneesh half smothered in them. "Do I?" "You are prettier than I have ever seen you, Melisse," he replied softly. There was a seriousness in his voice that made her come to him in her old impulsive, half-childish way.
Half a dozen paces from the door flap he stopped in sudden astonishment. Hanging to his tent in the form of a great wreath was the red bakneesh which he had cut the night before, and over it, scrawled in charcoal on the silk, there stared at him the crudely written words: "In honor of the living."
And you, Ma Cheri," added Adare tenderly, taking his wife by the hand, "Do you remember that it was over this same trail that we took our first walk from home? We went to the Chasm." "Yes, I remember." "And here where we stand the wood violets were so thick they left perfume on our boots." "And you made me a wreath of them with the red bakneesh," said Miriam softly. "And braided it in your hair."
When he returned with the team, Melisse was waiting for him, a gray thing of silvery lynx fur, with her cheeks, lips and eyes aglow, her trim little feet clad in soft caribou boots that came to her knees, and with a bunch of the brilliant bakneesh fastened jauntily in her cap. "I've made room for you," he said in greeting, pointing to the sledge.
It was but an instant, and he freed her, a hot blush burning in his brown cheeks. "My dear brother!" she laughed at him, gathering up the bakneesh on the table. "I love to have you kiss me, and now I have to make you do it. Father kisses me every morning when he goes to the store. I remember when you used to kiss me every time you came home, but now you forget to do it at all.
The flowers were all out now, and even the bakneesh vines glowed like red fire in the woods. Patches of green were beginning to hide the charred heap where the cabin had stood, and the blue-flower vines that covered the princess mother's grave were reaching out toward Pierrot's, as if the princess mother herself were the spirit of them.
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