Rawley looked up at him, though the movement of his eyeballs was excruciatingly painful. Again that sense of familiarity came to tantalize him. What was it? Peter’s great, square shoulders, his eyes? He made another effort to look more closely and failed altogether. His vision blurred; things went black again. Perhaps he slept, after that. When he opened his eyes again a cool wind was blowing; the intolerable glare outside the window had softened. He was conscious of a definite feeling of satisfaction when Nevada appeared with a tray of food such as fever patients may have; tea, toast, a bit of fruit--mostly juice. Behind her waddled her grandmother; Rawley could not yet believe in the reality of the relationship between this high-bred white girl and the old squaw. In the back of his mind he thought there must be some joke; or at least, he told himself, looking at the two closely, Nevada must be one of the tribe by adoption. He had heard of such things. And there was her Uncle Peter, who was a white man in looks, in personality, everything. Yet Uncle Peter had flared proudly, “We may be breeds--but we aren’t brutes.” He could only have meant himself and Nevada. He looked at her, his eyes going again to the squaw with her gray bangs, the red kerchief, her squat shapelessness. Her fear of him seemed to have evaporated upon reflection. Her curiosity concerning him had not, evidently. She set down the tray and stared at him with a frank fixity that reminded Rawley of the solemn regard of the sloe-eyed baby riding astride Aunt Gladys’ slatternly hip. “You feed Johnny Buffalo, Grandmother,” Nevada directed. “He used to live in this country when he was a boy. You can’t tell--you might be old acquaintances.” She smiled, patted the old woman on a cushiony shoulder and approached Rawley, who was suddenly resigned to his helplessness. “Grandmother rather holds herself above full-blood Indians,” she whispered. “She’s only half Indian, herself. I don’t want her to snub your partner; he looks so lonely, somehow. What is it?” “He’s grieving over my grandfather’s death,” Rawley told her, his own voice dropped to an undertone that would not carry. “Until I proposed this trip he didn’t want to live. He’s better, out here.” “I do hope--” A shrill ejaculation from the squaw brought Nevada’s head around. “What is it, Grandmother?” The old woman started a singsong Indian explanation, and Nevada smiled. “She says they do know each other. She remembers him when he was a boy and was lost. So that’s fine. He can hear about all his old playmates and his family.” She turned her back on them as if the duties of hostess sat more lightly on her shoulders, since one of the patients could visit with her grandmother. “I’m wondering what happened, up the trail.”