"You said when you knew me better you'd tell me about yourself."
The needle paused. She looked disconcerted, and frowned. "I can't
talk," she said slowly, "just to be talking. Talking is foolish. It
makes trouble. You never can tell what will be said before you are
through talking."
Ralph in his right mind would have laughed and commended her sound
sense. Now he waved it aside. "You said you'd tell me about
yourself," he repeated.
She pointed toward the dugout. "Your paddle is rough," she said.
"Take a knife and make the end smooth to fit the hand. Working is good
sense."
"I won't be put off like this!" cried Ralph hotly.
Temper was never an effective weapon to use with Nahnya.
She looked at him, scornful and disinterested as a child. "Put off?
What's the matter with you?"
Passion could not withstand that look, open and cold as a deep spring.
Ralph scowled and muttered, and dug up the stones with his toe.
After a while he returned to the charge with a more ingratiating
manner. "I want to know something about you so that we can be
friends," he said.
"What do you mean by friends?" she asked with another direct look.
Once more he had the feeling of the ground being cut from under him.
"Oh, friends!" he said vaguely. "Friends like to be together, and tell
each other everything, and help each other out."
"Can a white man be friends with a girl--like me?" she asked quietly.
"I never saw that."
The unexpected implied truth flicked Ralph on the raw. He had no
recourse but to lose his temper. "What have other men and girls got to
do with you and me?" he cried hotly. "Am I the same to you as Joe
Mixer and that lot?"
"Joe Mixer is always the same," she said. "He is easy to understand."
Ralph chose to see coquetry in this. "Is that the sort of man you
like?" he cried.
"No," she said. "But I know what to expect from him."
Her admirable good sense and directness were lost on him. Passion
found its voice. "Nahnya, do you want to drive me mad? You know what
I'm feeling! I couldn't sleep a wink last night for listening to you
breathing so softly inside your tent. I want you! I'm mad with
wanting you!"
She sprang up, and warily put the rock between them. The quiet eyes
fired up with surprising suddenness. "Stop it!" she cried. "You talk
foolish! You gone crazy, I think!"
"You drove me crazy!" he cried. "You're so beautiful! What did you
expect? Nahnya, it's summer time! You're no snow-woman with those
carnations in your cheeks--those lips! Come to me, Nahnya. Don't
fight me any more!"
Anger made lightnings in her eyes. "Stop it!" she cried, stamping her
foot. Her voice rang like steel. "What do you know about me, what I
am? What do you care? It is fine summer time and you want a woman!"
"It's not true!" he cried, moving toward her around the rock. "I want
only you!"
She evaded him. "It is true!" she cried ringingly. "You not know me!
I am not a coat to be worn by different men until I am old! I am no
man's woman to work for him and crouch before him like his dog! I am
myself--me! Nahnya Crossfox!"
He did not take in the sense of her words, but only saw that she was
twice as beautiful when angry. "I don't care what you are," he
muttered. "I want you!"
"Don't you touch me!" she cried warningly.
He had already sprung toward her. She gave back one step, and swung
her flexed arm swift as a cat's-paw. There was a resounding smack and
Ralph's cheek whitened and crimsoned.
He stopped in his tracks. In his eyes blank surprise was succeeded by
red fury. For an instant they stood thus at gaze, with heaving breasts
and stormy eyes.
"Keep away!" she said through her teeth.
"You devil!" he muttered. "I meant fair by you. I'll have you now
anyway!"
She turned and sped up the hill. Ralph clutched at her, but her flying
skirts only teased his finger-tips. He leaped after her, passion and
an outrageous anger lending springs to his heels. A strange elation,
too, formed part of the boiling mess in his brain. She chose to run;
very well then, let her take the penalty of capture.
Darting and twisting among the birch trees, chin up and elbows pressed
close to her sides, Nahnya ran as if upon a hundred feet. Ralph with
the expenditure of three times the effort was no match for her. He
could not twist his bulk among the trees so featly, nor leap so nimbly
up from stone to stone. To be beaten by a girl was unthinkable.
Grinding his teeth, putting his head down, he strained every nerve to
overtake her. But she distanced him still. At the top of the hill he
lost sight of her, nor could he any longer hear her flying moccasined
feet among the leaves and sticks.
What with the race uphill, and the unconscionable commotion inside him,
the burden was almost too much for a mortal heart. Ralph dropped on a
stone, and pressed his head between his hands. There was a pretty mess
inside it; to be scorned by a savage maiden, to have his face
slapped--hideous insult--and to have her get away scot free! Something
inside him seemed to writhe and turn over with rage.
He got up presently, and took his way downhill again with a black brow.
"She's got to go back to the boat," he reflected grimly. "I'll get her
there!"
As he issued out from among the trees he saw her. She was awaiting him
by the waterside, cool and wary. At the sight of her his heart leaped
up with an irresponsible, mad desire. No faun of earth's youth was
more cruel, ardent, untamed, and joyous than this young doctor of the
universities who had forgotten his past.
"By God! she's beautiful! And she's going to be mine!" his eyes cried.
"Keep away!" she said warningly.
He laughed, and ran toward her.
He could never have described exactly what happened. He saw her stoop
swiftly, and sensed the stick that she caught up, without being able to
stop himself. He heard the crack on his head that he did not feel, and
night spread her black pinions with a swoop over the summer noon.
Ralph came to his senses to find himself lying in the bottom of the
dugout, propped against folded blankets. A little in front of him he
could see Charley's indifferent back, and Charley's arms rhythmically
driving the paddle. Craning his neck to see if Nahnya was behind him,
a most convincing, grinding pain from the crown of his head down
through his spinal column arrested the movement. He closed his eyes,
and lay quiet while it spent itself.
He became conscious of a sickening weight on his breast. Little by
little recollection returned, explaining it. Life seemed like an ugly
task to take up. To be flouted and scorned and knocked down by the
woman he desired--a red woman into the bargain! He reflected bitterly
that she must have told Charley what had happened. Ralph had a mental
picture of the red-skin's shrug, and of being thrown contemptuously
into the dugout. A deep, slow rage burned in his breast like a
charcoal fire, poisoning his whole being with its fumes.
"If he shows anything in his face when he turns around, I'll smash
him!" thought Ralph. "It would do me good to smash his sulky brown
face. They shan't laugh at me, damn them!"
To add to the confusion inside him a little voice would make itself
heard saying: "Served you right, old man! She's a good girl. She did
just the right thing. You acted like a beast!"
This was what really maddened Ralph more than the recollection of his
injuries. While he lay there so quietly with his eyes closed, inside
him, so to speak, he was trying to shout down that damnable, persistent
small voice.
"Ignorant, dull savages! Scum of the earth! How dare they set
themselves up against a white man? I'll show them! I've been too
friendly with them. Their heads are swelled. I'll put them in their
places!"