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 gra.s.s; 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.

On the first day of his imprisonment, Garth, under threat of withholding supplies, had forced Mabyn to cut down the willows fringing the hither side of the island; and his movements about his fire and tepee were in plain view of those on sh.o.r.e. Concealed from him by a tree, Rina would often sit by the hour, watching him wistfully. "G.o.d knows what course her harried brain pursues!" Garth, observing her, thought--"if she thinks at all!" One thing was sure: under the strain of continued separation, her resistance to Mabyn's evil suggestions was gradually breaking down.

Meanwhile Garth was straining every nerve to complete the shack that was to be at once their habitation and their fortress. Within the shelter of its walls he hoped to sleep at peace again. His nerves were stretched like violin strings from the lack of it; for all he could permit himself was an hour or two in the morning while Natalie was awake and could warn him. All afternoon he chopped pine trees, which old Cy with an improvised harness dragged into camp; and far into the night, until overtaken with complete exhaustion, he trimmed his logs, squared the ends, and lifted them into place.

It was their second red-letter day, when the last sod was dropped into place on the roof, and Garth carried Natalie inside. Strictly considered, the house was not very much to brag about, perhaps; for it slanted this way and that like the first pothooks in a child's copybook; but Garth, fired by Natalie's enthusiastic praises, could not have been prouder if he had completed the Taj Mahal.

One end had been part.i.tioned off for Natalie's room; and in finishing this part Garth had spent all his pains. The floor was made of small logs, filled and plastered with clay, which he had hardened by building fires upon it; and had then strewn rushes over the whole. There was a rough bunk in one corner, with a low table by its side--the latest thing in rustics, the maker explained. There was a tiny window high up on the side overlooking the lake; it had no gla.s.s, but a stout shutter swinging on wooden pins, and which fastened with a strong wooden bar. But the crowning feature of the room, constructed with infinite pains after countless failures, was the fireplace in the corner. Garth deprecated it; it wasn't much of a fireplace; only a sort of little arched doorway of baked clay, so narrow the logs had to stand upright in it, making cooking very difficult--but when Natalie saw the flames curling up the chimney in the most natural way possible, she set up a feeble crow of delight.

The balance of the interior was to serve for Garth's room and storeroom combined. It had a very small door, also on the lake side; but he could not afford a window beside; and he also saved himself the trouble of flooring it. The door was constructed in the same manner as the shutter, of matched poles strongly braced behind, and further strengthened with rawhide lashings.

Natalie had Garth hang a spare blanket over the doorway between the two rooms; and she produced a shawl to serve for a table cloth. After supper, when they locked themselves in and heaped up the fire, Natalie propped up on her couch, and Garth sitting on a stool, smoking by especial request--it was as snug as Heaven, Natalie said. The nights had been growing dreadfully keen of late; and poor Natalie wrapped in all the blankets they possessed had nevertheless more than once lain awake with the cold. But now, within thick walls--what matter if they were out of the perpendicular?--and under a tight roof, with the flames leaping briskly up the chimney, no king in his palace ever experienced such a sense of opulent and all-sufficing luxury as Garth and Natalie the first night in their miserable shack.

This was the fourteenth day after Natalie's accident. Every day after the first week had shown a slight improvement in her condition; and every day had therefore lessened the hold Rina had over them; until now Garth felt, should it be necessary, he could bring the patient safely back to health unaided. Rina knew this too; and became daily more morose and sullen in her demeanour. To separate her longer from Mabyn would be, Garth felt, simply to promote an explosion. Besides, sufficiently housed now, well armed, and with the food safely stored, he felt strong enough to be merciful. On the night they moved into the shack he pointed out the canoe to Rina, telling her that henceforth she was free to use it as she would. He would go to the island no more, he added; but Rina might come every day for rations for both--as long as Mabyn remained where he was.

He hoped by this to incite the energetic Rina into planning Mabyn's escape from the island. They could catch a couple of horses and ride to their friends at the distant Settlement, or where they would. He felt he could trust Rina, if she ever got Mabyn among her own people, to keep him from coming back. Thus he would at the same stroke be rid of them, and conserve his rapidly diminishing stores. It was no great matter if they drove off all the horses, for he still had old Cy under his eye for Natalie to ride; and their own journey back would have to be undertaken at a walking pace, anyway. He had learned enough of Rina's mixed character to be sure that this would have a greater chance of coming about if he let her think of it for herself, so he said nothing to her.

He was disappointed. Mabyn, too timid to undertake so long a journey without ample supplies, or perhaps too obstinate to go, they remained on the island; and Rina came every day for food. If she was grateful for being allowed to join Mabyn she did not show it. Every trace of her better nature rapidly disappeared, and she seemed wholly the sullen savage. Bad treatment was the explanation they thought; and they pitied her.

Garth waited five days more. Natalie was by that time moving around freely; and they had begun to count the days to their ardently desired retreat from that unhappy valley. The question of food became more and more pressing--their journey would have to be spread over many slow stages; and he finally decided to drive Mabyn and Rina away.

So the next time Rina came, he told her he would give her two days'

rations for two persons the following day; and after that they need expect no more. In the meantime, he said, she was free to go up on the prairie and catch the first two horses she met. He even offered her old Cy to round them up, secure in holding the dugout for a hostage. Rina betrayed not the least surprise, or any other feeling at his ultimatum, but coolly rode off as he bid her. She returned within an hour driving Emmy and Timoosis, which she picketed below Mabyn's hut.

What pa.s.sed between Rina and Mabyn when she returned to the island, the other two could only guess at. However, Garth, up at dawn next morning, saw them striking the tepee. They made two trips back and forth between the island and the mouth of the creek; and afterward, while Mabyn saddled and packed the horses, Rina paddled to Garth's camp to get the promised rations. They both awaited her on the bank.