Instinctively Barry knew him to be the grunting individual who had waited outside the door the night before,--Lost Wing, Medaine's Sioux servant: evidently a self-constituted bodyguard who traveled more as a shadow than as a human being.

Certainly the girl in the foreground gave no indication that she was aware of his presence; nor did she seem to care.
Closer she came, and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile of massed logs and dead timber which strewed the small stretch of flat before the rise began, leading to where he rested.

More like some graceful, agile boy was she than a girl.

Her clothing was of that type which has all too soon taken the place of the buckskin in the West,--a riding habit, with stout little shoes and leather puttees; her hair was drawn tight upon her head and encased in the shielding confines of a cap, worn low over her forehead, the visor pulled aside by a jutting twig and now slanting out at a rakish angle; her arms full of something pink and soft and pretty.

Barry wondered what it could be,--then brightened with sudden hope.
"Wonder if she's bringing them to me ?" The answer came a moment later as she faced him, panting slightly from the exertion of the climb, the natural flush of exercise heightened by her evident embarrassment.
"Oh, you're up!" came in an almost disappointed manner.