"Yes, and shot her. She might have killed you when her temper was up over that cub. How did it happen?"
Each of them was a little easier in speech than at first, and she told him as well as she could of the episode, and her own inability to check Betty. And he told her of the fright of the others, and their anxiety, and that he had sent them straight ahead to camp, while he struck into the timber where Betty had left the old trail.
"I promised them to have word of you soon," he added; "and I reckon they'll be mighty glad you can take the word yourself – it's more than they expected. She might have killed you."
His tone and repetition of the words showed the fear that had been uppermost in his thoughts.
"Yes – she might," agreed the girl. "That is a lesson to me for my willfulness;" and then she smiled mockingly with a gleam of her old humor, adding: "And so in the future, for the sake of my neck and the safety of my bones, I will be most obedient to orders, Mr. Genesee Jack."
He only looked at her across the flickering circle of light from the torch. It must have dazzled his eyes, for in putting on his hat he pulled it rather low over his forehead, and turning his back abruptly on her he walked over for Mowitza.
But he did not bring her at once. He stood with his elbows on her shoulders and his head bent over his clasped hands, like a man who is thinking – or else very tired.
Rachel had again slipped down beside the tree; her head still seemed to spin around a little if she stood long; and from that point of vantage she could easily distinguish the immovable form in the shifting lights and shadows.
"What is the matter with the man?" she asked herself as he stood there. "He was glad to find me – I know it; and why he should deliberately turn his back and walk away like that, I can't see. But he shan't be cool or sulky with me ever again; I won't let him."
And with this determination she said:
"Genesee!"
"Yes," he answered, but did not move.
"Now that you have found me, are you going to leave me here all night?" she asked demurely.
"No, Miss," he answered, and laid his hand on the bridle. "Come, Mowitza, we must take her to camp;" and striding back with quick, decided movements that were rather foreign to his manner, he said:
"Here she is, Miss; can you ride on that saddle?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. I – I – suppose so; but how are you to get there?"
"Walk," he answered concisely.
"Why, how far is it?"
"About five miles – straight across."
"Can we go straight across?"
"No."
She looked up at him and laughed, half vexed.
"Mr. Genesee Jack," she remarked, "you can be one of the most aggravatingly non-committal men I ever met. It has grown as dark as a stack of black cats, and I know we must have an ugly trip to make with only one horse between us. Do you suppose I have no natural curiosity as to how we are to get there, and when? Don't be such a lock-and-key individual. I can't believe it is natural to you. It is an acquired habit, and hides your real self often."
"And a good thing it does, I reckon," he returned; "locks and keys are good things to have, Miss; don't quarrel with mine or my ways to-night; wait till I leave you safe with your folks, then you can find fault or laugh, whichever you please. It won't matter then."
His queer tone kept her from answering at once, and she sat still, watching him adjust the stirrup, and then make a new torch of pine splits and knots.
"What do you call a torch in Chinook?" she asked after a little, venturing on the supposed safe ground of jargon.
"La gome towagh," he answered, splitting a withe to bind them together, and using a murderous looking hunting-knife on which the light glimmered and fretted.
"And a knife?" she added.
"Opitsah."
She looked up at him quickly. "Opitsah means sweetheart," she returned; "I know that much myself. Are you not getting a little mixed, Professor?"
"I think not," he said, glancing across at her; "the same word is used for both; and," he added, thrusting the knife in its sheath and rising to his feet, "I reckon the men who started the jargon knew what they were talking about, too. Come, are you ready?"
Assuredly, though he had hunted for her, and been glad to find her alive, yet now that he had found her he had no fancy for conversation, and he showed a decided inclination to put a damper on her attempts at it. He lifted her to the saddle, and walking at Mowitza's head, they started on their home journey through the night.
"The moon will be up soon," he remarked, glancing up at the sky. "We only need a torch for the gulch down below there."
She did not answer; the movement of the saddle brought back the dizziness to her head – all the glare of the torch was a blur before her. She closed her eyes, thinking it would pass away, but it did not, and she wondered why he stalked on like that, just as if he did not care, never once looking toward her or noticing how she was dropping forward almost on Mowitza's neck. Then, as they descended a steep bit of hill, she became too much lost to her surroundings for even that speculation, and could only say slowly:
"Tsolo, Genesee?"
"No," he answered grimly, "not now."
But she knew or heard nothing of the tone that implied more than it expressed. She could only reach gropingly toward him with one hand, as if to save herself from falling from the saddle. Only her finger-tips touched his shoulder – it might have been a drooping branch out of the many under which they went, for all the weight of it; but grim and unresponsive as he was in some ways, he turned, through some quick sympathy at the touch of her hand, and caught her arm as she was about to fall forward. In an instant she was lifted from the saddle to her feet, and his face was as white as hers as he looked at her.
"Dead!" he said, in a quiet sort of way, as her hand dropped nerveless from his own, and he lifted her in his arms, watching for some show of life in the closed lids and parted lips. And then with a great shivering breath, he drew the still face to his own, and in a half-motherly way smoothed back the fair hair as if she had been a child, whispering over and over: "Not dead, my pretty! not you, my girl! Here, open your eyes; listen to me; don't leave me like this until I tell you – tell you – God! I wish I was dead beside you! Ah, my girl! my girl!"
CHAPTER VII.
UNDER THE CHINOOK MOON
Over the crowns of the far hills the moon wheeled slowly up into the sky, giving the shadows a cloak of blue mist, and vying with the forgotten torch in lighting up the group in the gulch. The night winds rustled through the leaves and sighed through the cedars; and the girl's voice, scarcely louder than the whispers of the wood, said: "Genesee! Tillie!"
"Yes, Miss," the man answered, as he lowered her head from his shoulder to the sward, making a pillow for her of his hat. With returning life and consciousness she again slipped out of his reach or possession, and himself and his emotions were put aside, to be hidden from her eyes.
Through the blessing of death, infinite possession comes to so many souls that life leaves beggared; and in those hurried moments of uncertainty, she belonged to him more fully than he could hope for while she lived.
"Is it you, Genesee?" she said, after looking at him drowsily for a little. "I – I thought Tillie was here, crying, and kissing me."
"No, Miss, you fainted, I reckon, and just dreamed that part of it," he answered, but avoiding the eyes that, though drowsy, looked so directly at him.
"I suppose so," she agreed. "I tried to reach you when I felt myself going; but you wouldn't look around. Did you catch me?"
"Yes; and I don't think you were quite square with me