The trials of the trail that would have dried
the soul and broken the mettle of a girl whose womanhood was less rich,
drew from hers the full measure of its strength. Every day had made
her less a being of calculated, artificial reserves, of inculcated
modesties, and more a human animal, governed by instincts that belonged
to her age and sex. She was normal and chaste and her chastity had
made her shrink from the man whose touch left her cold, and yield to
the one to whom her first antagonism had been first response. When she
had given Courant her kiss she had given herself. There was no need
for intermediary courtship. After that vacillations of doubt and
conscience ended. The law of her being was all that remained.
She moved on with the men, dust-grimed, her rags held together with
pins and lacings of deer hide. She performed her share of the work
with automatic thoroughness, eating when the hour came, sleeping on the
ground under the stars, staggering up in the deep-blue dawn and
buckling her horse's harness with fingers that fatigue made clumsy.
She was more silent than ever before, often when the old man addressed
her making no reply.
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