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He dropped back on his bunk, and Oachi sank upon the skins at his feet, looking up at him steadily with her wonderful, pure eyes, her mouth still rounded, little wrinkles of tense anxiety drawn in her forehead. Roscoe laughed. For a few moments his soul was filled with a strange gladness.
Oachi went out, wondering at the coldness with which he had received the word of their deliverance, and little guessing that in that moment he had fought the greatest battle of his life. Each day after this called him back to the fight. His two broken ribs healed slowly. The storm passed. The sun followed it, and the March winds began bringing up warmth from the south.
With a great, glad cry he sprang toward Oachi and caught her in his arms, crushing her face to him, kissing her hair and her eyes and her mouth until at last with a strange, soft cry she put her arms up about his neck and sobbed like a little child upon his breast. Back in the camp the Indian waited. The white stars grew red. In the forest the shadows deepened to the chaos of night.
Over their heads the wailing storm seemed to die for a moment; and then something rose in its place, so low and gentle at first that it seemed like a whisper, but growing in sweetness and volume until Roscoe Cummins sat erect, his eyes flashing, his hands clenched, looking at Oachi.
For the first time she was to him Oachi, the "Sun Child," a princess of the First People the daughter of a Cree chief. He held out his hand, and the hand which Oachi gave to him was cold and lifeless. She smiled when he told her that he had come to say good-bye, and when she spoke to him her voice was as clear as the stream singing through the cañon. His own voice trembled.
He filled page after page of the tablets which he carried in his pack, writing feverishly and with great haste, oppressed only by the fear that he would not be able to finish the message which he had for the people of that other world a thousand miles away. Three times during the morning Oachi came in and brought him the cooked fish and a biscuit which she had made for him out of flour and meal.
The chief sat with his face to the fire, smoking silently, and Oachi came to Roscoe's side, and touched hands timidly, like a little child. She seemed to him wondrously like a child when he lifted his head and looked down into her face. She smiled at him, questioning him, and he smiled his answer back, yet neither broke the silence with words.
And then, suddenly, from almost under his hands, something darted away with a strange, human cry, turning upon him for a single instant a face that was as white as the white stars of early night a face with great, glowing, half-mad eyes. It was Oachi. His pistol dropped to the ground. His heart stopped beating. No cry, no breath of sound, came from his paralyzed lips.
I must go to-morrow, or the next day, or soon after. Oachi " He still looked where he could not see her face. But he heard her move. He knew that slowly she was drawing away. "Oachi " She was near the door now, and his eyes turned toward her. She was looking back, her slender shoulders bent over, her glorious hair rippling to her knees, as she had left it undone for him.
He had never heard a voice so low and sweet and filled with bird-like ripples of music. She was beautiful, and yet with her beauty there was a primitiveness, a gentle savagery, and an age-old story written in the fine lines of her face which made him uneasy with the thought of a thing that was almost tragedy. Oachi loved him.
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