"Job, too, he was coming running, and he was sure you were lost.
When I came to meet you, and could not see you on the ridge, and
then went to the rapid and could not see you there, we began to
walk faster and faster, and then to run like crazy people. Poor
Job, he could hardly speak, and neither could I, and out of breath,
and half crying all the time. Oh, we can never trust you to go
away alone agains."
I said: "Very well, George, I'll make a bargain with you. If I can
have some one to go with me whenever I want to climb a mountain, or
do anything else that I think it is necessary to do in my work,
without any fuss about it, I promise not to go away alone again."
So the compact was made.
As we walked back to camp George talked. "And you did it so quick
too. Why I was watching you up on that mountain where you went
this afternoon, and you were so busy and running about up there, as
busy as a Labrador fly. You looked just like a little girl that
was playing at building something, and I thought how you were
enjoying yourself. Then the first thing I knew I heard the shots
on the other side of the lake. We did not see you at first. We
just looked across the lake and could see nothing, and we wondered
about those shots, and who could be there. Then Joe said: 'Look
there, up on the mountain.'
"Then we saw you, but we never thought it was you. Then Joe said:
'Why, it's a woman.' Then we only knew it was you. Even then we
could not believe it was you. Who ever would think to see you and
the little short steps that you could go away there, and so quick
too. Why, we couldn't believe it. The men got on to me too. They
said they never saw anything like the way you do. They said they
had been on lots of trips before, and where there were women too,
and they, said to me they never were on a trip before where the
women didn't do what they were told."
I laughed again, which George seemed to think was very hard-
hearted. He looked quite as if he could not understand such
callousness, and said: "Yes; you don't care a bit. Do you?"
Whereupon I laughed harder, and this time he did too, a little.
Then he went on: "Oh, I just thought I was never going to see you
again. I'm never going to forget about it. I was thinking about
how you would feel when you knew you were lost. It is an awful
thing to be lost.
