“You keep the b’ar off me, then. I don’t half injy myself while he’s foolin’ around me.”
To please the fellow, Old Pegs put the bear out of the cabin and came back.
“What do ye do with that b’ar o’ nights, boss?” Velveteens asked.
“We leave him outside; a mighty good watch-dorg, is Bruin. He don’t ’low no one to go slashing round this house, arter dark.”
The countenance of Velveteens fell several degrees and he lost his usual loquacity. The subject of the bear seemed to trouble him, and he returned to it again, insisting upon it that such an animal ought to be chained during the night.
“I reckon yer skeery about b’ars,” said Old Pegs. “I’ll humor you this time, and shut the b’ar up behind the house.”
This was done and Velveteens seemed more at ease, though Bruin kept up a fearful growling in his prison, tearing at the logs and snapping at his chain. Old Pegs went out on a scout, taking his new friend with him, and leaving Dave with Myrtle. I don’t know how it was done, but before half an hour had passed the two had forgotten their little “tiff” of the morning and were sitting side by side, hand clasped in hand, as only lovers sit, while through the chinks in the walls of the prison Rafe Norris glared at them.
“How long must I wait for revenge?” he muttered. “Oh, I will make him repent in dust and ashes the hour he led me, bound like a dog, into her presence. And you, proud rustic beauty, shall know what it is to scorn the love of such a man as I!”
Old Pegs very wisely kept out of the way for over two hours. Those hours were hours of agony to Rafe Norris. To see the woman he loved sitting with her head upon the bosom of the man he hated, while his strong arm encircled her slender waist, was torture. If his hands had been free, and he could have reached a weapon, that moment had been death, perhaps to both the lovers.
Old Pegs came back at last, and announced that they had seen no signs of Indians, and had reason to believe that they had decamped entirely. He found the young couple very much engaged over a book which Dave had brought from the fort, and grinned widely as he saw the trouble was over. Dave had begged her forgiveness but a moment before, and she had sealed it with a loving kiss.