Chapter 14

Garth understood then, that she drew very close to the man, lavish in the expression of her sad love and timid caresses, in a desperate effort to move him. He could not hear it all; but his cheeks burned to be the intruder on such an exposure of a woman's soul--a white soul, he thought, whatever the colour of her skin.

Mabyn was utterly insensible to it all. In the end he became impatient, and flung her away from him with an oath. She fell to the ground with a soft thud; and for a while there was no other sound, but the dreadful, low catch of her breath, as she sought to strangle her sobs.

"'Erbe't, if you no love me I die," she breathed.

"Rid me of this man and I'll love you fast enough!" said Mabyn eagerly. His breath came thick and stertorous. "Ah! Let me once grind my heel in the smooth, sneering face of him! and you shall do what you like with me!" Rage robbed him of speech; he made mere brutish sounds in his throat.

By and by he managed to control himself; and his voice resumed its crafty, wheedling tone. "Only do what I tell you, my Rina, and you shall know what it is to be loved by a white man. I shall have no thought all day, but of you! Up to now you have done all the loving; I will repay it twice over! You shall be loved as no red woman was ever loved before!"

"'Erbe't! 'Erbe't! Don't mak' me do it!" she whispered terror-stricken.

Garth could stand no more. Springing to his feet, he strode forward, grasping the barrel of his rifle to use it for a club. Shooting was too merciful for such a creature.

"You damned scoundrel!" he cried.

Mabyn fell back against the wall with a gasping cry of fright. Quick as Garth was, Rina was quicker. Before he could reach the man, she scrambled over the ground, and clutched him by the knees.

"Let him be!" she screamed. "I kill you!"

Garth struggled vainly to free himself. Finally bending over and seizing her shoulders, he thrust her away. But the blow he again aimed at Mabyn never descended; for with incredible swiftness Rina gained her feet, and darted down hill.

"I kill _her!_" she shrilled.

A sickening fear gripped Garth's heart, instantly obliterating all thought of Mabyn. He dashed after Rina, nerved to a desperate fleetness. She knew the ground better than he; and hampered, moreover, by the weight of his gun, he despaired of overtaking the moccasined savage. But at the watercourse the strange creature stopped dead; and waited for him to come up.

"Go back to your white woman!" she cried stormily. "If you 'urt him, I pull her bandage off, and beat her arm till she die of pain!"

XVIII

MABYN MAROONED

When Natalie awoke, it was a gray and haggard Garth she saw through the raised flaps of her tent. His arms, folded on his knees, bore up his chin; and he stared before him, still pursuing the narrow round of his troublous thoughts. He was the gainer for his excursion, by valuable information--but he was no nearer the solution of it all.

Natalie partly raised herself on her good arm. "My poor Garth!" she said softly. "How very tired you are!"

His weary eyes lighted up. "I'm all right," he cried. "And how are you?"

"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 détour 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. Reëmbarking, 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.

XIX

GRYLLS REDIVIVUS

On the next day but one Natalie's condition took a sharp turn for the worse; and for many days thereafter, Garth put every other thought out of his head. She fell into a high fever and suffered incessantly and cruelly. At this call, Rina showed forth in colours wholly admirable; day or night she seldom left her patient's side; she was never at a loss what to do; and Garth comforted himself with the thought that Natalie could scarcely have had better care anywhere.

During these busy days Rina appeared to forget her own heartache in a measure; and never once on the occasion of their daily trip to the island (Garth forcing her to accompany him) did she again express a wish to speak to Mabyn. At their approach Mabyn always retreated; and they were accustomed to set his rations down on the shore and immediately go back.

But Garth could not trust the breed unreservedly, and unceasing vigilance was his portion. He had little enough sleep before, and now he strove to do without it altogether. For three days and three nights he did not close his eyes. On the fourth day, warned by his tortured, wavering brain that it must be either sleep or madness, he took his fate in his hands and lay down on top of the cache, with his gun beside him.

He was unconscious for nearly twelve hours. When he awoke it was to find Rina's eyes fixed upon him strangely. He sprang up, and she turned away her head. He could not read that expression--still he had lain there at her mercy and she had spared him. Neither had she liberated Mabyn from the island, for Garth could see him moving about. He began to hope that his arguments had real weight with the breed; and little by little, under pressure of his great need, he began to trust her.

But when the dread promontory was weathered at last, and Natalie, a wraith of her blooming self, awoke in her right senses, Rina changed again, resuming her old sullen, moody self; and all his work was undone. It was clear the unfortunate girl was dragged ceaselessly back and forth between her new-fledged soul and the old savage impulses of her blood. She learned to love the irresistible Natalie whom she had snatched back from death--but she likewise hated her; hated her blindly because Mabyn loved her; and inconsistently, but naturally, too, hated her because she despised Mabyn. The same with Garth; over and over she unconsciously showed she trusted him; but her blood still rebelled because he was Mabyn's enemy; and he would sometimes find her eyes fixed on him in a quickly veiled expression of savage, implacable hatred.