Cave Girl | Page 8

the latter led Waldo straight into the shadows of the
wood, then she turned abruptly toward the north, at right angles to the
course they had been pursuing. She still clung to the young man's hand,
nor did she slacken her speed the least after they had entered the
darkness beneath the trees. She ran as surely and confidently through
the impenetrable fright of the forest as though the way had been lighted
by flaming arcs; but Waldo was continually stumbling and falling.
The sound of pursuit presently became fainter; it was apparent that the
cave men had continued on straight into the wood; but the girl raced on
with the panting Waldo for what seemed to the winded young man an
eternity. Presently, however, they came to the banks of the little stream
that had been visible from the caves. Here the girl fell into a walk, and
a moment later dragged the Bostonian down a shelving bank into water
that came above his knees. Up the bed of the stream she led him,

sometimes floundering through holes so deep that they were entirely
submerged.
Waldo had never learned the vulgar art of swimming, so it was that he
would have drowned but for the strong, brown hand of his companion,
which dragged him, spluttering and coughing, through one awful hole
after another, until, half-strangled and entirely panic-stricken, she
hauled him safely upon a low, grassy bank at the foot of a rocky wall
which formed one side of a gorge, through which the river boiled.
It must not be assumed that when Waldo Emerson returned to face the
hairy brute who threatened to separate him from his new-found
companion that by a miracle he had been transformed from a hare into
a lion--far from it.
Now that he had a moment in which to lie quite still and speculate upon
the adventures of the past hour, the reaction came, and Waldo Emerson
thanked the kindly night that obscured from the eyes of the girl the
pitiable spectacle of his palsied limbs and trembling lip.
Once again he was in a blue funk, with shattered nerves that begged to
cry aloud in the extremity of their terror.
It was not warm in the damp ca–on, through which the wind swept over
the cold water, so that to Waldo's mental anguish was added the
physical discomfort of cold and wet. He was indeed a miserable figure
as he lay huddled upon the sward, praying for the rising of the sun, yet
dreading the daylight that might reveal him to his enemies.
But at last dawn came, and after a fitful sleep Waldo awoke to find
himself in a snug and beautiful little paradise hemmed in by the high
cliffs that flanked the river, upon a sloping grassy shore that was all but
invisible except from a short stretch of cliff-top upon the farther side of
the stream.
A few feet from him lay the girl.
She was still asleep. Her head was pillowed upon one firm, brown arm.

Her soft black hair fell in disorder across one cheek and over the other
arm, to spread gracefully upon the green grass about her.
As Waldo looked he saw that she was very comely. Never before had
he seen a girl just like her. His young women friends had been rather
prim and plain, with long, white faces and thin lips that scarcely ever
dared to smile and scorned to unbend in plebeian laughter.
This girl's lips seemed to have been made for laughing--and for
something else, though at the time it is only fair to Waldo to say that he
did not realize the full possibilities that they presented.
As his eyes wandered along the lines of her young body his Puritanical
training brought a hot flush of embarrassment to his face, and he
deliberately turned his back upon her.
It was indeed awful to Waldo Emerson to contemplate, to say the least,
the unconventional position into which fate had forced him. The longer
he pondered it the redder he became. It was frightful--what would his
mother say when she heard of it? What would this girl's mother say?
But, more to the point, and--horrible thought--what would her father or
her brothers do to Waldo if they found them thus together--and she
with only a scanty garment of skin about her waist--a garment which
reached scarcely below her knees at any point, and at others terminated
far above?
Waldo was chagrined. He could not understand what the girl could be
thinking of, for in other respects she seemed quite nice, and he was sure
that the great eyes of her reflected only goodness and innocence.
While he sat thus, thinking, the girl awoke and with a merry laugh
addressed him.
"Good morning," said