“And where?” she demanded.
“Back to your Kalkar friends,” I replied.
“It is because you are not a Kalkar that I did not fly,” she said.
“How do you know that I am no Kalkar,” I demanded, “and why, if I am not, should you not fly from me, who must be an enemy of your people?”
“You called him ‘Kalkar’ as you charged him,” she explained, “and one Kalkar does not call another Kalkar that. Neither am I a Kalkar.”
I thought then of what the Or-tis had told me of the thousand Americans who had wished to desert the Kalkars and join themselves with us. This girl must be of them, then.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Bethelda,” she replied; “and who are you?”
She looked me squarely in the eyes with a fearless frankness that was anything but Kalkarian. It was the first time that I had had a good look at her. By The Flag! She was not difficult to look at. She had large, gray-green eyes and heavy lashes and a cheerful countenance that seemed even now to be upon the verge of laughter. There was something almost boyish about her and yet she was all girl. I stood looking at her for so long a time without speaking that a frown of impatience clouded her brow.
“I asked you who you are,” she reminded me.
“I am Julian 20th, The Red Hawk,” I replied, and I thought for an instant that her eyes went a little wider and that she looked frightened; but I must have been mistaken, for I was to learn later that it took more than a name to frighten Bethelda. “Tell me where you are going,” I said, “and I will ride with you, lest you be again attacked.”
“I do not know where to go,” she replied, “for wherever I go I meet enemies.”
“Where are your people?” I demanded.
“I fear that they are all slain,” she told me, a quiver in her voice.
“But where were you going? You must have been going somewhere.”
“I was looking for a place to hide,” she said. “The Nipons would let me stay with them if I could find them. My people were always kind to them. They would be kind to me.”
“Your people were of the Kalkars, even though you say you are no Kalkar, and the Nipons hate them. They would not take you in.”
“My people were Americans. They lived among the Kalkars, but they were not Kalkars. We lived at the foot of these hills for almost a hundred years and we often met the Nipons. They did not hate us, though they hated the Kalkars about us.”
“Do you know Saku?” I asked.
“Since I was a little child I have known Saku, the Chief,” she replied.
“Come, then,” I said, “I will take you to Saku.”
“You know him? He is near?”
“Yes, come!”
She followed me down the trail up which I had so recently come and though I begrudged the time that it delayed me, I was glad that I might have her off my hands so easily and so quickly, for, of a certainty, I could not leave her alone and unprotected, nor could I take her upon my long journey with me, even could I have prevailed upon my people to accept her.
In less than an hour we came upon Saku’s new camp, and the little people were surprised indeed to see me, and overjoyed when they discovered Bethelda, more than assuring me by their actions that the girl had been far from stating the real measure of the esteem in which the Nipons held her. When I would have turned to ride away they insisted that I remain until morning, pointing out to me that the day was already far gone and that being unfamiliar with the trails I might easily become lost and thus lose more time than I would gain. The girl stood listening to our conversation, and when I at last insisted that I must go because, having no knowledge of the trails anyway, I would be as well off by night as by day, she offered to guide me.
“I know the valley from end to end,” she said. “Tell me where you would go and I will lead you there as well by night as by day.”
“But how would you return?” I asked.
“If you are going to your people perhaps they would let me remain, for am I not an American, too?”
I shook my head. “I am afraid that they would not,” I told her. “We feel very bitterly toward all Americans that cast their lot with the Kalkars—even more bitterly than we feel toward the Kalkars themselves.”
“I did not cast my lot with the Kalkars,” she said, proudly. “I have hated them always—since I was old enough to hate. If four hundred years ago my people chose to do a wicked thing is it any fault of mine? I am as much an American as you, and I hate the Kalkars more because I know them better.”
“My people would not reason that way,” I said. “The women would set the hounds on you and you would be torn to pieces.” She shivered.
“You are as terrible as the Kalkars,” she said, bitterly.
“You forget the generations of humiliation and suffering that we have endured because of the renegade Americans who brought the Kalkar curse upon us,” I reminded her.
“We have suffered, too,” she said, “and we are as innocent as you,” and then, suddenly, she looked me squarely in the eyes. “How do you feel about it? Do you, too, hate me worse than as though I were a Kalkar? You saved my life, perhaps. You could do that for one you hate?”
“You are a girl,” I reminded her, “and I am an American—a Julian,” I added, proudly.
“You saved me only because I am a girl?” she insisted.
I nodded.
“You are a strange people,” she said, “that you could be so brave and generous to one you hate and yet refuse the simpler kindness of
