THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 301 
toa, when it went by. I could almost judge with certainty 
‘whence it cometh or whither it goeth!’ Not a starved and 
bitter shrub, but its fingers pointed a significance—or showed 
something on one side of the discolored bark—either the 
direction of the nearest water, or of the prevailing wind— 
not an antelope that darted past but would have led me the 
way to some Oasis!’ She paused suddenly. 
“That a man should utter such thought would not surprise 
me so much’’—said I, hastily. ‘ But that a woman should—” 
“A woman should!” she interrupted. “Give a woman 
something to love and something to venerate—an idea to 
achieve—and what will she not accomplish! Now you show 
yourself a child again!” 
“You make woman in yourself more infallible than man 
pretends to be, even in his proper and peculiar field !”’ 
“Young man—lI understand you! I could possibly get 
lost as easily as some men—but I could not get scared!” 
“Thank you!” said I, with a poor effort at\the magnani- 
mous. But she‘went on without noticing. 
“TJ should not have been flurried out of my common sense, 
anid lost all the chance I had for getting out of the scrape— 
ifIamawoman. There is too much yet ic be accomplished 
to justify any one in throwing away a life. Mankind has yet 
to be redeemed. The world needs all its laborers !”’ 
Here is the key-note to this strange anomaly—I thought! 
“You will not do much to redeem it out here!” I ventured 
to hint. 
She turned her head abruptly, merely muttering— 
‘You will know more some time!” and, as at the moment, 
a herd of deer, which had been lying down in the grass within 
range, sprang up from:a low piece of the ground—her rifle 
was at her shoulder in an instant. A deer bounded into the 
air, and merely saying as she turned off— 
“Wait for me!”—she proceeded to cut the throat of the 
animal—reloading her rifle as she went. 
