She always cried when he went away, and cried when he returned; and then, in another moment, it was Keok who was laughing first, and Alan noticed she no longer wore her hair in braids, as the quieter Nawadlook persisted in doing, but had it coiled about her head just as Mary Standish wore her own.
These details pressed themselves upon him in a vague and unreal sort of way.

No one, not even Mary Standish, could understand how his mind and nerves were fighting to recover themselves.

His senses were swimming back one by one to a vital point from which they had been swept by an unexpected sea, gripping rather incoherently at unimportant realities as they assembled themselves.

In the edge of the tundra beyond the cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads.

He drew off his pack as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks.