As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills
and rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the
sky. Beneath such a moon no harm could come to her. It was while she
stared at it, letting her tensed alertness relax little by little,
that she saw, or thought she saw, a hint of moving white pass over the
top of the rise of ground and disappear among the trees.
She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins
with a jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked
back and saw the fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice
to be replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel nearby; and she
saw also the softly piled bed of evergreens.
She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered that imaginary
figure of moving white? She felt a strong power of protection lying
all about her, breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines,
fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze. She was alone,
but she was secure in the wilderness.
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