"Splendid!" she said, matching his tone--while her face was drawn with
pain. "Come in," she added softly.
He sat a little diffidently on the ground beside her; Natalie's
room--though its walls were of canvas--was a sacred place to him when
she was in it.
"Look at me!" she commanded.
He turned his grave, smiling eyes down on her. In spite of difficulties,
dangers and weariness, he had to smile when he looked at her; he loved
her so! His eyes were full of it.
Natalie's eyes fell; her hand crept into his. "You may tell me to-day,"
she whispered.
He understood. "Oh, my Natalie!" he murmured deeply. "I love you! It
breaks my heart to see you suffer!"
She caught up his hand, and pressed it to her cheek. "I am cured!" she
whispered with a lift in her voice.
"There is something I want you to do for me," she said presently.
"Anything in the world!" he cried.
"No!" she said. "This is only a little thing--but you mustn't laugh!"
He immediately smiled.
"I want to feel, for a moment, that I have helped you too," she
whispered. "Put your head down on my good shoulder."
He flung himself down beside her, and laid his head where she bid. Her
breath was warm on his cheek. He slipped his over-heavy burden, and
glided into Paradise for awhile.
"My brave, brave Garth," she whispered in his ear. "All my heart is
yours! I thought about this last night--every time I woke. I thought we
might steal one such moment. I thought, what if something happened to
you, or to me, and we had never known it!"
She tried to tempt him to sleep a while, but Garth, fearful of tiring
her, and with his responsibilities pressing on him, drew himself away.
He arose, better refreshed, he vowed, than by all the nights of sleep he
had ever had in his life.
As he rose, their lips met, once and briefly.
* * * * *
Garth's first task after breakfast was to clear the growth of willows
that obstructed their access to the lake. The little island was framed
squarely in the centre of the opening made by his axe; and off to the
left, across an estuary formed at the mouth of the watercourse, Mabyn's
shack stood on top of its cut-bank in plain view.
At sight of the convenient island, Garth was struck by an idea. He
examined it attentively. It lay something less than a quarter of a mile
off shore; and a triangle might have been drawn between his camp, the
island and Mabyn's shack, of which the three sides would have been of
about equal length. The island was about three acres in extent; and
completely ringed about with willow bushes. In the centre, two or three
cottonwood trees elevated their heads above the willows.
Later, he asked Natalie casually: "Could Mabyn swim, when you knew him,
do you remember?"
"He could not," she said instantly. "In fact he had a childish horror of
the water."
Garth turned his head to hide his satisfaction; and his plan began to
take shape.
While the sun was yet low, Rina, true to her promise, came to attend
upon Natalie. There was no change in her manner; her unreadable eyes
expressed no consciousness of the events of the night before. She
questioned Natalie in her best professional way. It was not yet
necessary to disturb the dressings on the arm; but she volunteered to do
Natalie's hair; and what other offices would contribute to her comfort.
Garth, convinced now that he had as sure a hold on her as she on him,
unhesitatingly allowed her to enter the tent alone. But he kept within
earshot.
He necessarily overheard part of their talk. Natalie, it seemed, had a
method of her own with Rina. Obliterating the fact that she had received
her injury at the breed's hands, she was unaffectedly grateful for all
that was done for her; and what was more subtle--or kinder--she treated
Rina as her equal, as one who understood in herself the thoughts and the
instincts of a lady. Garth, with the clue he possessed to the unhappy
heart of the girl, could not tell which he ought to commend the more,
Natalie's mother-wit, or her generosity.
Rina apparently sought to steel her breast against the other's
overtures. For the most part she maintained a hardy silence; and when
she did speak, it was in sullen monosyllables.
Issuing out of the tent, she surprised Garth by asking, as one who
demands a right, to take old Cy. She needed an herb for Natalie, she
said, that could only be procured on the shore of a slough five miles
away. Garth was prompt with his permission. There was a possibility
that it was merely a pretext to deprive them of the horse; but his heart
leaped at the chance of getting Rina out of the way for an hour. It was
all he needed to complete his plan; and it had seemed an insuperable
bar. If she turned the horse out, he would come back anyway; for Cy was
the town-bred horse, always waiting anxiously about camp for his
vanished stable; and Garth had further trained him to stick to the
outfit, with judicious presents of salt and tobacco.
Rina, disdaining a saddle, scrambled on his back, and rode off. Garth
waited, not without anxiety, to see what direction she would take. She
presently reappeared, mounting the rise to the shack. Pausing briefly at
the door, apparently to speak within, she continued her way up the slope
behind; and, gaining the prairie, disappeared over the brow.
Garth instantly put himself in motion. He had his compunctions in thus
moving against Rina while she was absent on an errand for Natalie; but
he consoled himself with the thought that Rina, with all she could do,
had still a heavy score to pay off. He told Natalie what he was about to
do; and at her earnest pleading carried her out of the tent, and propped
her partly upright at the edge of the lake where she would be able to
see him. Then, looking to his gun, he set off a second time for the
shack.
From the circumstance of Rina's pausing at the door, he was well assured
that Mabyn was within. He had marked that the door stood open. On his
way, he paused to examine the ancient dugout lying at the mouth of the
watercourse; and found it in a sufficiently seaworthy condition to
answer his purpose. A paddle lay in the bottom.
Garth ascended the grassy slope swiftly and noiselessly; and making a
detour around the window, presented himself suddenly at the door. Mabyn
was revealed to him sprawling on his blankets in the corner, plucking at
his face, and scowling at the rafters, he, too, no doubt, plotting and
scheming. When the armed shadow fell across the floor of his shack, he
started to his elbow; his eyes widened, his flesh blanched and a visible
trembling seized his limbs.
"What do you want?" he contrived to stammer.
Strong disgust seized Garth again; so despicable an adversary shamed his
own manhood. He shifted his gun significantly.
"Get up!" he said.
Mabyn dragged himself to his hands and knees. It was some moments before
he could control himself sufficiently to stand upright.
"What are you going to do with me?" he kept muttering.
Garth stepped backward. "Come outside!" he commanded.
Mabyn obeyed, making a circuit of the walls for support. His eyes were
always riveted on the gun; and however slightly it was moved, he
experienced a fresh spasm of fear.
"Face about!" ordered Garth; "and walk to the mouth of the creek!"
Mabyn became even paler. His skin was like white paper on which ashes
have been rubbed, leaving streaks and patches of gray. "Would you shoot
me in the back?" he said shrilly. "An unarmed man! I will not turn my
back!"
"Then walk backward!" said Garth, with his laconic start of laughter.
Mabyn went like a crab down the rise, with his head over his shoulder, a
ludicrous and deplorable figure. He was unable to drag his eyes from the
gun, consequently he stumbled and lurched over every obstacle. Once he
fell flat; and a sharp scream of fright was forced from him. Garth
sickened at the sight, while he laughed. He had to give him a minute in
which to recover himself.
Mabyn, scarcely coherent, ceaselessly begged for mercy. "Do not kill
me!" he whimpered. "I _can't_ die! Oh, God! Not like this! I never had a
chance! You kill Natalie if you kill me--the breed will fix her!--and my
mother! You'll have three murders on your soul! I _can't_ die yet!"
"Get up!" commanded Garth.
Reaching the edge of the water, he ordered him into the dugout.
Mabyn fell on his knees on the stones. "Not in the water! Not in the
water!" he shrilled. "Kill me here!"
"No one is going to kill you," said Garth with scornful patience. "Do
what you're told, and you'll not be hurt!"
Mabyn darted a furtive look of hope and suspicion in Garth's face. He
got up.
"What are you going to do with me?" he muttered.
"Put you on the island," said Garth coolly.
"I'll starve," he whined.
"Food will be brought you regularly, as long as you obey orders," said
Garth.
Mabyn, his extreme terror subsiding, showed an inclination to temporize.
"Let me get a few things," he begged. His eyes wandered to the hill over
which Rina had disappeared.
Garth was anxious on the same score. He fingered the trigger of his gun.
"In with you!" he said.
Mabyn jumped to obey.
Garth, sitting in the bow with his weapon in his arms, faced Mabyn; and
forced him to wield the paddle. Mabyn, seeing that he did mean to put
him on the island, realized there had been no occasion for his brutish
terror; but instead of feeling any shame for the self-betrayal, he
characteristically added it to his score against Garth. His gray eyes
contracted in an agony of impotent hate. At that moment unspeakable
atrocities committed on Garth's body would not have satisfied Mabyn's
lust to destroy his flesh. Any move on his part would have overturned
the crazy dugout, but, shivering at the sight of the water, he was
unable to take that way.
Garth, wary of the furtive gleam in the man's eye, sprang to his feet
the instant they touched the island, and leaped out, careful never to
turn his back. He forced Mabyn to retire a dozen paces, while he took
the place he vacated in the stern; and then he ordered him to push off.
At the prospect of being left alone, Mabyn's flesh failed him again. He
clung to the bow of the canoe, and gabbled anew for mercy. Garth,
wearying of it all, suddenly sent a shot over his head. His weapon,
silent and smokeless, had an effect of horrible deadliness. Mabyn, with
a moan of fear, pushed the canoe off, and sank back on the grass of the
islet.
Exchanging his gun for the paddle, Garth hastened back to the mouth of
the creek, pausing only to wave his hat reassuringly at Natalie, whom he
could see reclining on her grassy couch. An essential part of his plan
was yet to be effected; and he knew not how soon Rina might return.
Hastily ransacking the cabin, he gathered together all their meagre
rations; flour, sugar, beans, tea and pork; and he likewise commandeered
everything that might be turned to use for a weapon; an axe, a chisel,
and all knives. Three trips up and down the hill conveyed it to the
dugout. Reembarking, he had no sooner brought it all to his own camp
than Natalie's sharp eyes discovered Rina returning on the distant hill.
Garth carried Natalie into the tent again; and nerved himself to await
the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he could see Rina alight at the door,
search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant
returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to
the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water,
she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she
clambered on the horse again. Presently she came crashing through the
bush.
This was a vastly different kind of antagonist, that slipped from the
horse and faced him with blazing eyes. Rina regarded the weapon in his
hands with as little respect as if it had been a pop-gun. But there was
nothing baffling about her now, she was just the furious woman common to
any shade of skin.
"Where is he?" she cried--and without waiting for any answer, emptied
the hissing ewer of her wrath over Garth's head. Her careful English was
drowned in a flood of guttural Cree--she fished it up only to curse him.
Garth received the impact in silence, for at first she was in no
condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as
a man thinks of an interesting circumstance that does not concern him at
all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him greater patience.
Rina, bethinking herself at last that her Cree was wasted on him, went
back to English. "You wait!" she cried threateningly. "Bam-bye, her
bone, him grow together, and she all the time cry of pain! Then you
want me bad, and I not come! She will have fever and die!" She
passionately threw down the leaves she had brought and ground them under
her heel.
"Mabyn is unhurt!" Garth repeated patiently more than once. "I put him
on the island."
At last it seemed to reach her. "What for you do that?" she demanded.
"He is always trying to kill me," he said. "I have only put him where he
can do no harm!"
"I tak' him off!" she cried defiantly. "I mak' a raft! You can't stop
me!"
"I have seized all the food," said Garth quietly. "You will get none for
him unless he stays where he is."
Rina's anger stilled and concentrated. "You devil!" she hissed.
Garth turned away. "When you are yourself," he said coolly, "I will talk
to you plainly and honestly about us all."
"I not talk with you!" she stormed. "You tell lies to me! I not come
again--till some time you sleep--then I come and kill you!"
He faced her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the
way is made open for Mabyn to come to _her_!" he cried. "Where will you
be then?--thrown on the ground, as you were yesterday!"
The shot told. Her arms dropped, she visibly paled. The white man's
blood in Rina's cheeks betrayed her at the moments when most she
desired to secrete her heart. She lowered her head to hide her stricken
eyes from him. Suddenly she turned and fled through the trees.
Garth was beginning to believe that Rina after all was not so different
from her white sisters; if so, he thought she would come back. Natalie,
who had overheard all that passed, said so too. Garth wished to carry
Natalie out of the tent, that she might help him work with the girl; but
Natalie, with better wisdom, said no, that Rina would be more tractable
if she were out of sight.
Meanwhile he set to work with an air of unconcern he was far from
feeling--there were a hundred ways this plan of his might miscarry, and
only one way it could succeed! He tied old Cy to his stake again; and
carefully gathered up what remained of the herbs Rina had cast on the
ground. He unloaded the seized supplies and made a temporary cache under
a piece of sail-cloth.
By and by, while he was so engaged, he became aware that Rina was
hovering about among the trees. He went on with his task, carefully
avoiding any notice of her. She approached by devious stages, like a
child drawn against its will. When it became impossible longer to
conceal herself, she came into the open with her old, wistful, sullen,
inscrutable face. Garth went about his work, displaying no anxiety to
treat. He made her speak first.
"What you want say to me?" she asked at last, feigning supreme
indifference.
"Sit down," he said.
She dropped obediently on the grass; and averted her head. She did not
squat like the other red people; but reclined, supporting herself on one
hand, much as Natalie might have done.
Garth lit his pipe, considering what simple, figurative form of words
would best appeal to her understanding.
"I do not wish Mabyn harm," he began mildly. "He is nothing to me. My
heart knows only one wish--to make her well, and to take her back safely
to her friends outside. To accomplish that, I will let nothing stop me!"
He paused to let it sink in. Rina gave no sign of having even heard.
"That is your wish, too," he continued. "You want her away from here.
She and I are nothing to you. You were happy before we came!"
She darted a startled look at the man who could so well read her
feelings.
"Mabyn is mad because she will not have him!" Garth went on. "He is
always crazy for what he cannot have."
She turned her head again with the look that said so plainly, "How did
you know that?"
"When we get her away, he will soon forget. All will be as it was
before!"
She maintained her obstinate silence.
"Do I not speak true words?" Garth challenged.
She evaded the question. "If you go out, you send the police after him,"
she muttered.
He saw Mabyn's hand here. "I will not," he said quickly. "I give you my
word on that!"
She looked at him incredulously. She did not understand the pledge.
"There's my hand on it," said Garth, offering it.
Rina gravely laid her own in it, and let him wag it up and down. This
form of binding an agreement she knew.
Still she had not committed herself to anything; and Garth paused,
determined to make her speak before he went on.
She favoured him at last with a walled glance purely savage. "Let
'Erbe't go off the island," she said indifferently. Clearly she asked it
more with the idea to see what he would say, than with any hope of his
agreeing.
"I will not do that," said Garth firmly. "Night and day he would be
plotting to kill me. Night and day he would be driving you on to do it
for him. You would try to do it. You cannot say no to him! And if you
did bring me down--" Garth sunk his voice--"all, _all_ would be
lost!--Mabyn and you and Natalie and I!"
Her eyes sought his with a poignant glance; and she paled again. He felt
he had made an impression.
"I will treat him kindly," he said, seeking to follow up his advantage.
"You shall go to the shack now for everything he needs; and we will take
it to him."
"Can I spik with him?" asked Rina in a low tone.
Garth rejoiced--it was the first token of submission. "For five minutes
by my watch," he said.