Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/358

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would be more or less in their glasses, our time was set for the escape.

She came about midnight, the true and faithful little savage, the heroine, the red star of my dreadful life, crouching on the roof, and laid hold of the bars one by one, and bent them till I could pass my head and shoulders. Then she drew me through, almost carried me in her arms, and in another moment we touched the steep but solid earth.

She hurried me up the hill-side to the edge of a thicket of chaparral. I could go no further. I fell upon my knees and clasped my hands. I bent down my face and kissed and kissed the earth as you would kiss a sister you had not seen for years. I arose and clasped the bushes in my arms, and stripped the fragrant myrtle-leaves by handfuls. I kissed my hands to the moon, the stars, and began to shout and leap like a child. She laid her hand on my mouth, and almost angrily seized me by the arm. I turned and I kissed her, or rather only the presence and touch of her. I lifted her fingers to my lips, her robe, her hair, as she led me over the hill, around and down to a trail. There, in answer to the night-bird call, an Indian, a brave, reckless fellow, who had been with me in many a bold adventure, led three horses from a thicket.

The tide was coming in again. The great grey surf was breaking over the wall of the Sierras in the east. They lifted me to my saddle, for I was as weak as a child. We turned our steeds