THE SUBTLETY OF GORDON STRANGE.
At the same moment Gordon Strange was sitting on the bench at the foot
of the flag-staff, smoking, and gazing speculatively across the river
at the teepee village.
Colina issued out of the big house, and seeing him, joined him. It was
her first public appearance since the scene at the mill, and it was
something of an ordeal.
Her face showed what she was going through. She was elaborately
self-conscious; defiance struggled with a secret shame. In her heart
she knew she was wrong, yet she thirsted for justification.
"What is the situation?" she asked haughtily.
Strange told her briefly. His air was admirable. He betrayed no
consciousness of anything changed in her; he was deferential without
being obsequious.
He let her understand that she was still his peerless mistress who
could do no wrong. This was exactly what Colina wanted. She warmed
toward him, and sat down.
"Ah! I can talk straight to you," she said. "The others act as if the
truth was too strong for me!"
"I know better than that," said Strange quietly. "You have the best
head of any of us."
"Except when I lose it!" Colina thought. She smiled at him more warmly
than she knew. A little flame that leaped up behind the man's eyes
warned her. "Would he ever dare!" she thought.
"How is your father?" asked Strange quietly.
She shrugged helplessly. "Still weak," she said, "but there has been
no return of fever. I have managed to keep the truth from him, but he
suspects if. I cannot keep him in his room much longer."
"Ah! It makes me mad when I think of him!" Strange muttered.
There was a silence between them. His sympathy was sweet to her. She
allowed it to lull her instinct of danger.
"What about the Kakisas?" she asked. "I gathered from Macfarlane's and
Dr. Giddings's careful attempts to reassure me, that they feared danger
from that source."
Strange smiled enigmatically.
"Surely the idea of an Indian attack is absurd," said Colina. "There
hasn't been such a thing for thirty years."
"I know the Indians better than any man here," said Strange. "One may
expect danger without being afraid."
"Danger!" cried Colina, elevating her eyebrows. "They would never
dare!--"
"Not of themselves--but with a leader!"
"Ambrose Doane?" said Colina quickly. Her intelligence instantly
rejected the suggestion, but self-love snatched at it in justification.
Wounded vanity makes incongruous alliances. "That would be devilish!"
she murmured.
Strange shrugged. "I can't be sure of what is going on," he said. "I
don't want to alarm you unnecessarily. But I have a reason to suspect
danger."
Colina turned pale. "Tell me exactly what you mean," she said.
"The Indians have learned by now how easy it was to seize the mill," he
said with admirable gravity. "It seems to me that to the Indian mind
looting the store will next suggest itself. We know they are incensed
against your father. His long weakness makes them bold."
"But these are merely surmises!"' cried Colina.
"There is something else. Their minds work obliquely. They never come
out straight with anything. I have received a kind of warning. It was
an invitation to spend the night with Marcel Charlbois down the river.
But it came from the other side."
"Why should they warn you?" asked Colina.
"Some man among them probably has compunctions," said Strange.
"Watusk, the head man is a decent sort. Perhaps this is his way of
letting me know that he cannot keep his people in hand."
"What do you expect will happen?" she asked.
"I think there will be an attack to-night," he said quietly. "It is my
duty to tell you. If it doesn't come, no harm done."
Strange's quiet air was terribly impressive. Colina sat pale and
silent, letting the horror sink in. She was no weakling, but this was
a prospect to appal the strongest man.
"We are so helpless!" she murmured at last.
A spark, one would have said of satisfaction, shot from beneath
Strange's demurely lowered eyelids. "We cannot depend on our breeds,"
he went on soberly, "and Greer has gone over to the other side."
Colina winced.
"That leaves us four men and yourself and your father. If we had a
stone building we could snap our fingers at them but everything is of
wood. And fire is their favorite weapon. There are two courses open
to us. We can go before they come, or we can stay and defend
ourselves."
Colina stared before her, wide-eyed. "Father would never let us take
him away without an explanation," she murmured. "And if we told him
what we feared, he would flatly refuse to go--"
Strange maintained a discreet silence.
Colina suddenly flung up her head. "We stay here!" she cried.
Strange's dark eyes burned--but with what kind of a feeling Colina was
in no state to judge. "You're brave!" he cried. "That's what I wanted
you to say!"
"What must we do to prepare?"
"There is little we can do. We must abandon the store. There is no
way to defend it. Perhaps they will be satisfied with looting it. We
will all take up our station in the house. At the worst, I do not fear
any harm to any of us, except perhaps--"
"Father?" murmured Colina.
"They have been wrought up to a high pitch against him," Strange said
deprecatingly.
"Oh, why did that man have to come here!" murmured Colina.
They were silent for a while, Colina looking on the ground, and Strange
watching Colina with his peculiar limpid, candid eyes, which, when one
looked deep enough, were not candid at all.
He finally looked away from her.
"There is something I want to say," he began an low tones. "Your
father--he shall be my special care to-night. They can strike at
him--only through me."
"Ah, you're so good to me!" murmured Colina.
"Do not thank me," he said quickly. "Remember I owe him everything.
All I am. All I have I would gladly--gladly--I sound melodramatic,
don't I. But I don't often inflict this on you. You know what I mean.
If I could save him!"
Colina impulsively seized his hand. Tears of gratitude sprang to her
eyes. "I will thank you!" she cried. "You're the best friend I have
in the world!"
"And even if I owed him nothing," Strange went on, not looking at her,
"he would still be your father!"
An hour before Colina would have crushed him. But it came at an
emotional moment. She was blind to his color then.
"I will never, never forget this," she said.
He respectfully lifted her hands to his lips.
The under devil whose especial business it is to preside over fine
acting must have rubbed his hands gleefully at the sight of his
dark-skinned protégé's aptitude.