“There was love,” he said softly at last. “My sergeant did not love the mother of your father. I could see in his eyes when he looked upon her that his thoughts were not with her, and that his heart was far away.”
They lay for a long time silent. Each thought that the other slept, he lay so still. But of a sudden Rawley reached up his uninjured hand and pushed back the bandage that was slipping over his eye. The movement betrayed not so much protest against a physical discomfort as the impatient mind that seeks in vain for the correct answer to a puzzle.
But Johnny Buffalo did not sleep. He lay staring at the ceiling, his mouth closed firmly with lines beside it which nature draws to show when the soul is weary. But there was no longer any bitterness there, though there was pain. The hollow eyes glowed steadily, as if the old man had found a light ahead somewhere in the blackness of his grief. Once, a gentle snore drew his attention, and he turned his head and stared for a long while at the young, unlined face with the bandage drawn diagonally above it. For Rawley the Great Game had only begun; his stakes were piled before him, to win or to lose. The old Indian wondered gravely how that Game would be played. Wisely? Bravely,—he was sure. Honestly,—he hoped.
CHAPTER TWELVE
RAWLEY PLAYS THE GAME
How wisely, how honestly, how bravely he would play the Great Game, Rawley unconsciously indicated that evening, when Peter sat alone with the two, after Nevada and her grandmother had given them their supper and gone away. Peter had declared himself rather proud of his surgical skill, and had almost yielded to Rawley’s importunities that he might get up and dress in the morning and help take care of Johnny Buffalo. But Peter had his father’s firmness, after all.
“I took five stitches in that gash on your head,” he explained. “Queo uses slugs to knock over an elephant. I’m not so sure your skull isn’t cracked. You talk rather crack-brained, sometimes.” (That was Peter’s first joke with them.) “Best wait until we’re sure, anyway.”
Rawley gave an embarrassed kind of laugh and sent an involuntary, inquiring glance at Johnny Buffalo.
“I wish you’d lock the door, Uncle Peter, and then bring me my coat. I’ve got something on my mind other than a cracked skull and embroidered hide.
“Now, to make the thing clear to you, Uncle Peter, I’ll have to say that Grandfather left here expecting to come back—and I hope you told your mother what happened.”
Peter nodded.