Part 47

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.