“Queo shot him twice—but he killed Queo,” she told them. “Uncle Jess, you’re to get his spring cot, Uncle Peter says, and fix a bed in there.” Her eyes went challengingly to her grandfather. “Uncle Peter says we owe them the best care we can give,” she stated clearly. “He says they have saved some lives in this family.”
The tall, bearded old patriarch looked at her frowningly. He glanced toward the rock cabin, grunted something unintelligible to the girl, and went in to his interrupted dinner.
CHAPTER TEN
A FAMILY TREE
It seemed as fantastic as a troubled dream. To be lying there helpless, to look across and see Johnny Buffalo staring grimly up at the ceiling, his face set stoically to hide the pain that burned beneath the white bandage, held no semblance of reality. Was it that morning only, that they had left the car and started out to walk to the “great and high mountain”? Perhaps several days had passed in oblivion. He did not know. To Rawley the shock of drifting back from unconsciousness to these surroundings had been as great as the shock of incredulous slipping down and down into blackness. He moved his head a half-inch. The pain brought his eyebrows together, but he made no sound. Johnny Buffalo must not be worried.
“All right again, are you?” Peter moved into Rawley’s range of vision. “You had a close squeak. The thickness of your skull between you and death—that was all. The bullet skinned along on the outside instead of the inside.”
“I’ll be all right then,” Rawley muttered thickly. “Don’t mean to be a nuisance. Soon as this grogginess lets up—”
“You’ll be less trouble where you are,” Peter interrupted him bluntly. “I’ve done all I can for you now, so I’ll go back to my work. The Injun’s making out all right, too. Head clear as a bell, near as I can judge. I’ll see you this evening, and if there’s anything you want, either of you, just pound that toy drum beside you. That will bring one of the women.”
Rawley looked up at him, though the movement of his eyeballs was excruciatingly painful. Again that sense of familiarity came to tantalize him. What was it? Peter’s great, square shoulders, his eyes? He made another effort to look more closely and failed altogether. His vision blurred; things went black again. Perhaps he slept, after that. When he opened his eyes again a cool wind was blowing; the intolerable glare outside the window had softened.
He was conscious of a definite feeling of satisfaction when Nevada appeared with a tray of food such as fever patients may have; tea, toast, a bit of fruit—mostly juice. Behind her waddled her grandmother; Rawley could not yet believe in the reality of the relationship between this high-bred white girl and the old squaw. In the back of his mind he thought there must be some joke; or at least, he told himself, looking at the two closely, Nevada must be one of the tribe by adoption. He had heard of such things.
And there was her Uncle Peter, who was a white man in looks, in personality, everything. Yet Uncle Peter had flared proudly, “We may be breeds—but we aren’t brutes.” He could only have meant himself and Nevada. He looked at her, his eyes going again to the squaw with her gray bangs, the red kerchief, her squat shapelessness.