"I must go," she exclaimed anxiously. "I must go home. I must cook for Zashue! He is looking for me! I must go," and she attempted to rise.
Shotaye tried to quell her sudden apprehension, but she kept on with growing excitement,—
"I must! Let me go! Let me go! For he is looking for me."
"He is not," assured the other. "Be quiet. He is yonder with his people in the cave. There he sits and there he will stay till late."
A sudden tremor seized the body of Say. Her hands shook like aspen leaves. "Is he there?" she gasped. "Then he is coming after me. Is he not a Koshare?" Her eyes glistened with that peculiar glare which betokens aberration of the mind.
Any ordinary Indian woman would have concluded from the appearance and utterances of Say that she was hopelessly insane, and would either have resorted to incantations or left her in terror. Shotaye, although very much frightened, did not think of desertion, but only of relief. With keen self-possession she said in a decided and convincing tone,—
"Fear nothing, sa tao; he will not come, for he knows nothing."
"Nothing?" inquired Say, looking at her with the shy and sly glance of a doubting maniac.
"Nothing at all!" Shotaye exclaimed, firmly. She had recovered her ascendency. She directed her glance, commanding and convincing, straight at the wavering gaze of the excited woman, whose look became dim and finally meek. Shotaye took advantage of the change.
"Zashue knows nothing at all," she asserted, "and that is very, very good; for it gives us hope."