She turned to glance momentarily at Lachlan, riding ten paces behind her. He was gazing to the right, watching a small herd of wild black cattle grazing in a savannah, and she saw his face in profile. She saw the Indian in it, and she saw the Frenchman; the Scotch blood, she had already decided, was not apparent. Beneath its buckskins, she knew, that body was as lithe and strong as Little Mink's; and the face was far handsomer. It had not the stony impassiveness of an Indian's countenance. Even in moments of repose the vivid spirit behind it shone through it like a flame; always, in spite of the sharply chiselled Indian features, it was a face luminous and alive.
He was like a fairy-tale, she reflected, this young Indian Prince. Somehow she could not quite believe in him. And all that Almayne had told her about him was like a fairy-tale. Who in England would credit her if she told the story there: that in the wilderness of America there was a nation, or group of nations—an empire in miniature, the Confederacy of the Muskogee—over which an old Scotsman reigned as King, dwelling in barbaric affluence in his great house at Tallasee, waited upon by his scores of negro slaves, teaching his copper-skinned subjects the arts of peace and of war?
Who in England would believe her if she told what Almayne had told her about that wilderness empire of which this slim, dark youth behind her was Prince and heir, if she told of the Red Towns and the White
