mattress of fragrant hemlock tips as if at home in her own bed.

“These mountain girls are as tough as rawhide,” he thought. “Imagine a city girl going through what she did last night without a whine! And sleeping like that under a rock. And——”

His hand strayed to a shirt pocket and fingered some crumbled shreds of tobacco.

“And saving some smokes for me and stubbing over here on a sprained ankle to give me half the bedding. Would any of those flossy dolls in New York—or Chi or San Fran or N’Orleans—do that? Humph!”

Softly he stepped along the little shelf where last night he had set lamp and gun; sank to a comfortable squat, his back against the wall; filled and lit his pipe. Thereafter he squatted a few minutes smoking and musing.

“‘Nigger Nat’s girl,’” he thought. “Daddy a drunken yellow mongrel, mother a hard-tongued half-breed. How in thunder can a pair like that produce such a witching wildcat as Marion Oaks? Her skin’s[38] brown, but the brown is only sun-tan, or my eyes are liars. And that hair and those eyes! How come?”

[38]

A flirt of active wings drew his gaze away for a moment. On a limb of a plucky young pine growing from the face of the cliff above, a pair of inquisitive yellowhammers had paused to spy and gossip. Their bright eyes peered knowingly downward, and as they bobbed and bowed their restless heads the black crescents under their creamy throats vied for notice with the brilliant red splashes behind their crowns. Up and down the branch they hopped, murmuring fussily over this most scandalous event—a man and a girl shamelessly occupying an outdoor boudoir, just as if they were as free of convention as the birds themselves. The man smiled up at them and waved a hand in acknowledgment of their sharp scrutiny. Instantly they winnowed away on whispering wings, to perch again farther on and renew their eager watch. Douglas resumed his puffing and puzzling.

“Must be a throwback of heredity,” he decided. “There are such things as red-headed niggers. Saw one in Detroit once. The white strain in her folks cropped out strong when she was born. Must be tough for a girl to be white and yet have the tainted blood in her veins. No self-respecting white man could marry her, of course. But it’s a dirty shame that you have to be cursed by your ancestors, little Miss Marion. You haven’t a chance. You’ll become the ‘woman’ of some ignorant brute down below, and before you’re thirty 

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