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 d.a.m.ned 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 sh.o.r.e; 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 sh.o.r.e 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.