His attention was attracted in the other direction by a laugh from Bela. It had anything but a merry sound, but their ears were not sharp enough to detect the lack. Bela's nostrils were dilated, and her lip oddly turned back. But she laughed.

"He is fonny cook!" she said. "I got laugh!"

"Oh, never mind him!" said Big Jack. "He doesn't count! What is your answer?"

Bela stopped laughing. "Well, I got think about it," she said. "I tell you to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITTLE MEADOW

The situation at Nine-Mile Point was not improved by the wholesale proposal for Bela's hand. The twenty-four hours she required for her answer promised to be hard to get through.

The interim of waiting for a lady to make up her mind is sufficiently trying on a man's nerves under the most favourable circ.u.mstances; but to be obliged to endure the company of all his rivals meanwhile was almost too much.

Breakfast was eaten in a dangerous electrical silence. No man dared to speak of what was in every man's mind, and to make trivial conversation was impossible under that atmospheric pressure.

Afterward, when Bela announced her intention of going away for a while, every man, much as he desired her company, felt relieved, and no word was spoken to stay her departure.

They let her go without so much as looking out to see which way she went. As a matter of fact, n.o.body was willing to let anybody else look; therefore, he could not look himself.

Thereafter they breathed more freely. At least, they were all in the same boat. They were not under the intolerable strain of watching every look of her eyes and interpreting every word she spoke for a sign.

The worst they had to look forward to was one more day of unutterable boredom. Each man was buoyed up by the hope that it might be the last of such days for him.

Sam went about his work with a wooden face and a sore and angry heart.

He was not much of a self-a.n.a.lyst. He called Bela all manner of hard names to himself, without stopping to ask why, if she were such a worthless creature, he should feel so concerned about her.

A woman who took her pleasure in provoking four men to the point of murder was not worth bothering about, he told himself a hundred times; but he continued to be very much bothered.

"I'll never let her get me on her hook!" he cried inwardly--meanwhile the hook was in his gills!

After he had given the men their dinner he, too, went away from camp, bent upon his own devices. No one paid any attention to him.

A couple of hundred yards east of the shack a good-sized creek emptied into the lake. The stones of the sh.o.r.e offered a barrier to its path, over which it tumbled musically. Farther inland it pursued a slower, deeper course.

Ascending its bank, in about a quarter of a mile one found it issuing out of a lovely little meadow, through which it meandered crookedly, its course marked out by willow bushes.

The meadow was Sam's objective. He had often been there before. It was about a quarter of a mile long, and no more than a good stone's throw across from pines to pines. Though the level of the ground was several feet above the creek, the ground, like the creek bottoms generally, was spongy and damp, with dry islands here and there.

The gra.s.s was amazingly luxuriant. Drenched in the strong sunlight, and hemmed all around by the secretive pines, the place was the very picture of a cheerful retreat. Silent, strong-winged water-fowl frequented it, and more than once Sam had caught a glimpse of a n.o.ble figure of a moose stepping out from among the trees.

Sam, ever anxious to learn the lore of the country, was experimenting in trapping muskrats. Finding a couple of the little beasts snared and drowned at the doors of their own dwellings, he set to work to skin them. His inexperienced fingers made a mess of the job.

He was sitting thus occupied on the edge of a little cut-bank, with his feet hanging over. A clump of willows flanked him on either side.

The clear waters of the brook eddied sluggishly a few inches under his feet.

In the middle of his b.l.o.o.d.y task, something caused him to look over his shoulder, and there, not twenty feet from him, peering through the willows, he saw Bela.

From a variety of causes, he blushed to the roots of his hair. For one thing, he was thinking bitterly of her at that very moment; for another, he saw, or imagined he saw, scorn in her eyes for his clumsy handiwork upon the muskrat.

He hastily tossed the little carca.s.s into the water, and then regretted having done so.

"What are you spying on me for?" he demanded hotly.

The word was strange to Bela, but the tone conveyed its sense. She promptly took fire from his heat.

Showing herself proudly, she said: "I not know spyin'."

"Following me around," said Sam. "Watching what I do without my knowing."

"I follow you for cause I want talk," said Bela indignantly. "I think maybe you got sense. If you not want talk to me, all right; I go away again. You ain't got sense, I think. Get mad for not'ing."

Sam was a little ashamed.

"Well--I'm sorry," he muttered. "What did you want to talk about?"

She did not immediately answer. Coming closer, she dropped to her knees on the little hummock of dry earth.

"I show you how to skin him, if you want," she suggested, pointing to the other muskrat.

Sam swallowed his pride. "All right, go head," he replied.

Cutting off the paws of the little animal and making an incision over his broadest end, she deftly rolled back the skin, and drew it off inside out over his head like a glove.

Then cutting a willow stem beside her, she transformed it with two half cuts into a little spring-frame, over which she drew the late muskrat's over-coat. The whole operation did not consume five minutes.

"Easy enough when you know how," admitted Sam sheepishly.

"Hang it up to dry," she said, handing it over.

They stretched in the gra.s.s side by side, and, hanging over the edge, washed their hands in the creek. A silence fell upon them. Each was waiting for the other to speak. Sam was trying to resist a great tenderness that threatened to undermine all his fortifications.

Finally he asked again: "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bela (Colleen Moore) announces to Gladding (Lloyd Hughes): "Me want you husband."

_(Photoplay Edition--"The Huntress") (A First National Picture)_]

Bela was not yet ready to answer. She threw up little cascades of water with her hands. Sam, watching, was suddenly struck by the fact that they were not at all like ordinary hands.

This was the first pair of hands he had ever distinguished in his life. They were most beautiful objects, the backs ivory coloured, the palms and finger-tips a lovely dusky pink. They were useful hands, too--thin, strong, nervous. Watching them play in the water, he forgot the argument going on inside him.

"You not mad wit' me now?" murmured Bela softly.