She gripped him with both hands. He had never heard her voice as it was
now. She answered the amazement and horror in his face.
"I sent you a letter," she cried pantingly, "and it didn't overtake you.
As soon as you were gone, I knew that I must come--that I must
follow--that I must speak with my own lips what I had written. I tried to
catch you. But you traveled faster. Will you forgive me--you will forgive
me--"
She turned to the door. He held her.
"It is the smallpox," he said, and his voice was dead.
"I know," she panted. "The man over there--told me what the little flag
means. And I'm glad--glad I came in time to go in to him--as he is. And
you--you--must forgive!"
She snatched herself free from his grasp. The door opened. It closed
behind her. A moment later he heard through the sapling door a strange
cry--a woman's cry--a man's cry--and he turned and walked heavily back
into the spruce forest.
THE MOUSE
"Why, you ornery little cuss," said Falkner, pausing with a forkful of
beans half way to his mouth. "Where in God A'mighty's name did YOU come
from?"
It was against all of Jim's crude but honest ethics of the big wilderness
to take the Lord's name in vain, and the words he uttered were filled
more with the softness of a prayer than the harshness of profanity. He
was big, and his hands were hard and knotted, and his face was covered
with a coarse red scrub of beard.
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