"Did he ever try to seek you out ?" "No! Why should he ?" replied the imperturbable Low; "he was not a Cherokee." "No, he was a beast," responded Teresa promptly.

"And your mother--do you remember her ?" "No, I think she died." "You THINK she died?
Don't you know ?" "No!" "Then you're another!" said Teresa.

Notwithstanding this frankness, they shook hands for the night: Teresa nestling like a rabbit in a hollow by the side of the campfire; Low with his feet towards it, Indian-wise, and his head and shoulders pillowed on his haversack, only half distinguishable in the darkness beyond.
With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped by.

Their retreat was undisturbed, nor could Low detect, by the least evidence to his acute perceptive faculties, that any intruding feet had since crossed the belt of shade.

The echoes of passing events at Indian Spring had recorded the escape of Teresa as occurring at a remote and purely imaginative distance, and her probable direction the county of Yolo.
"Can you remember," he one day asked her, "what time it was when you cut the riata and got away ?" Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.
"About three, I reckon." "And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground in four hours ?" "Perhaps--I don't know," she said, her voice taking up its old quality again.