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Another thing happened on our way here which may perversely have helped to confirm her in this pretty notion of Harshaw’s disinterestedness.

At a place by the river where the current is bad (there are many such places, and, in fact, the whole of the Snake River is a perfect hoodoo) Harshaw stopped one day to drink. The wagon had struck a streak of heavy sand, and we were all walking. We stood and watched him, because he drank with such deep enjoyment, stooping bareheaded on his hands and knees, and putting his hot face to the water. Suddenly he made a clutch at his breast pocket: his Norfolk jacket was unbuttoned. He had lost something, and the river had got it. He ran along the bank, trying to recover it with a stick, and, not succeeding, he plopped in just as he was, with his boots on. We saw him drop into deep water and swim for it, a little black object, which he caught, and held in his teeth. Then he turned his face to the shore; and precious near he came to never reaching it! We women had been looking on, smiling, like idiot dolls, till we saw Tom racing down the bank, throwing off his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried to follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less realized it–his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch; the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot where the beast of a current that had him swooped inshore.

I am sorry to say that my husband’s first words to the man he may be said to have saved from death were, “You young fool, what did you do that for?”

“For this,” Harshaw panted, slapping his wet breast.

“For a pocket-book! Great Sign! What had you in it? I wouldn’t have done that for the whole of the Snake River valley.”

“Nor I,” laughed Harshaw.

“Nor the Bruneau to boot.”

“Nor I.”

“What did you do it for, then?”

“For this,” Harshaw repeated.

“For a piece of pasteboard with a girl’s face on it, or some such toy, I’ll be sworn!”

Harshaw did not deny the soft impeachment.

“I didn’t know you had a girl, Harshaw,” Tom began seductively.

“Well, I haven’t, you know,” said Harshaw. “There was one I wanted badly enough, a few years ago,” he added with engaging frankness.

“When was it you first began to pine for her? About the period of second dentition?”

“Oh, betimes; and betimes I was disappointed.”

“Well, unless it was for the girl herself, I’d keep out of that Snake River,” my husband advised.

Kitty’s face wore a slightly strained expression of perfect vacancy.

“Do you know who Harshaw’s ‘girl’ was?” I asked her the other night, as we were undressing,–without an idea that she wouldn’t see where the joke came in. She was standing, with her hair down, between the canvas curtains of our tent. It looks straight out toward the Sand Springs Fall, and Kitty worships there awhile every night before she goes to bed.

“No,” she said. “I was never much with Cecil Harshaw. It is the families that have always known each other.” The simple child! She hadn’t understood him, or would she not understand? Which was it? I can’t make out whether she is really simple or not. She is too clever to be so very simple; yet the cleverness of a young girl’s mind, centred on a few ideas, is mainly in spots. But now I think she has brought this incident to bear upon that precious theory of hers, that Harshaw offered himself from a sense of duty. Great good may it do her!

The Sand Springs Fall, a perfect gem, is directly opposite our camp, facing west across the lagoon. We can feast our eyes upon it at all hours of the day and night. Tom has told Kitty, in the way of business, that he has no use for that fall. She may draw it or not, as she likes. She does draw it; she draws it, and water-colors it, and chalks it in colored crayons, and India-inks it, loading on the Chinese white; and she charcoals it, in moonlight effects, on a gray-blue paper. But do it whatever way she will, she never can do it.