“You still cling to that word, Myrtle. If I had been his prisoner, and had attempted to escape, he would not have hesitated to fire at me.”
“Doubtless you are right,” she said; “but I shall not pardon you for that. Why have you told my story to me here?”
“That you may know that I am not entirely unacquainted with your history, and that I knew who and where you were before I came to the Indian country. Myrtle, I came to find you and win your love!”
“You came here for that!” she cried, with dilating eyes, “Who and what are you, then?”
“Rafe Norris, at your service! Curly-headed Ned, so called at the forts upon Hudson Bay; and Edward Forrester within the realms of civilization. But come—have you rested enough?”
She rose at once and followed him, but the name which he had given last troubled her. “Curly-headed Ned” she knew by report, as a chief over one section of the Modoc Sioux, and a man whose name was stained by a hundred crimes. But, why did he lay claim to the name of Forrester?
“I see that you are puzzled,” he said, with a smile. “I am afraid that you doubt that the name of Forrester is really mine. Is it not so?”
“I can not see why you claim it.”
“Because it is my right name. I have the honor to be your cousin, my dear girl, and this will in some sort account for the affection which I bear you.”
“You claim kindred with me, and yet seek to wrong me in the basest manner. There—I believe that it is all false, and— Where are you taking me? I have been in this pass before.”