In fact, he had merely stepped from a canoe at the foot of the path and his moccasined feet had made no sound upon the sward as he approached. He received the girl's eager spring with grave dignity, and immediately replaced her upon the Snowbird's back.
[Illustration: GASPAR AND KITTY REACH THE FORT. _Page 188._]
"Why, Black Partridge! Don't you know me? Aren't you glad to see me? Four years since we said good-by, that day at poor Muck-otey-pokee."
"I remember all things. Why is the Sun Maid here, at this hour?"
Gaspar had recovered himself and now broke into a torrent of explanation, which the chief quietly interrupted as soon as he had gathered the facts of the case.
"But don't you think, dear Feather-man, that our Wahneenah will soon come?" demanded Kitty, anxiously.
"The gates are open. Let us enter," he answered evasively; and the novelty of her surroundings so promptly engrossed the girl's mind that she forgot to question him further then. Somewhere on the dimly lighted campus a bugle was sounding; and it awakened sleeping memories of her earliest childhood. So did the regular "step-step" of soldiers relieving guard. A new and delightful sense of safety and familiarity thrilled her heart, and she exclaimed, joyfully:
"Oh, Gaspar! it is home! it is home! More than the cabin, more than Other Mother's tepee, this is home!"
"Do you suppose I will find any of the dear white 'mothers' who were so good to me? Or Bugler Jim, who used to play me to sleep under the trees in the corner? I wish it wasn't so dark. I wish----"
"It's all new, Kit. They are all strangers. The rest, you know--well, none of them are here. But these will be kind, no doubt. Yet to me, even in this dark, it seems--it seems horrible! It all comes back: that morning when I first rode Tempest. The massacre----"
The tone of his voice startled her, and she begged at once:
"Let us go right away again. I am not afraid of the storm, nor the darkness, and nothing can harm us if we pray to be taken care of. The Great Spirit always hears. Let us go."
"It is too late. It's beginning to rain and that man is ordering us to dismount, that he may put the horses in the stables. Jump down."
There were always some refugees at the Fort. Just then there were more than ordinary; or, if all were not such, there were many passing travellers, journeying in emigrant trains toward the unsettled west, to make their new homes there, and these used "Uncle Sam's tavern" as an inn of rest and refreshment.