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Updated: June 14, 2025
Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they thought Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun for the bird was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very still.
Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had been gathering begin to sweep upon him. It had been Keok's suggestion that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea.
This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was shooting firecrackers! A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok's mischievous habit of lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness Nawadlook never failed to scold her.
She always cried when he went away, and cried when he returned; and then, in another moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed she no longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her own. These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of way.
Shaded candles burned on the floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal.
"Of course Keok and Nawadlook helped her." "Not very much. She did it. Made the curtains. Put them pictures and flags there. Picked the flowers. Been nice an' thoughtful, hasn't she?" "And somewhat unusual," added Alan. "And she is pretty." "Most decidedly so." There was a puzzling look in Stampede's eyes. He twisted nervously in his chair and waited for words. Alan sat down opposite him.
"Give me up to them, Alan. If you love me give me up!" A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and then another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs of the cabin.
He crushed her so close that for a breath or two life seemed to leave her body. A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his arm. "We can get away there!" she cried in a low voice. "I have opened the little door.
He would walk suddenly in among them, unseen and unheard. That was the sort of thing that would amaze and delight them. He came to the first of the trees and concealed himself carefully. He heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one of the "giants" that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty ears.
Keok went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last. She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no whisper, no farewell caress came with it.
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