“So you’re stuck on that Langford girl, are you?” he demanded, laughing. “Well, it won’t do you any good, Dakota, she’s—well, she’s some sore at you for something. She won’t listen to anything which is said about you.” The laughter died out of his eyes; they became cold with menace. “I ain’t listenin’ to any more of that sorta talk, I tell you! I’ve got my eyes open. Why!” he said in surprise, starting up, “he’s gone!” He suddenly shuddered and cursed. “In the back,” he said. “You—you——” And profanity gushed from his lips. Then he collapsed, closing his eyes, and lay silent and motionless.
Out of the jumble of disconnected sentences Sheila was able to gather two things of importance—perhaps three.
The first was that some one had told him of Dakota’s complicity in the plan to murder him and that he refused to believe his friend capable of such depravity. The second was that he knew who had shot him; he also knew the man who had informed him of Dakota’s duplicity—though this knowledge would amount to very little unless he recovered enough to be able to supply the missing threads.
Sheila despaired of him supplying anything, for it seemed that he was steadily growing worse, and when the dusk came she began to feel a dread of remaining with him in the cabin during the night. If only the doctor would return! If Dakota would come—Duncan, her father, anybody! But nobody came, and the silence around the cabin grew so oppressive that she felt she must scream. When darkness succeeded dusk she lighted the kerosene lamp, placed a bar over the window, secured the door fastenings, and seated herself at the table, determined to take a short nap.
It seemed that she had scarcely dropped off to sleep—though in reality she had been unconscious for more than two hours—when she awoke suddenly, to see Doubler sitting erect in the bunk, watching her with a wan, sympathetic smile. There was the light of reason in his eyes and her heart gave an ecstatic leap.
“Could you give me a drink of water, ma’am?” he said, in the voice that she knew well.
She sprang to the pail, to find that it contained very little. She had lifted it, and was about to unfasten the door, intending to go to the river to procure fresh water, when Doubler’s voice arrested her.
“There’s some water there—I can hear it splashin’: It’ll do well enough just now. I don’t want much. You can get some fresh after a while. I want to talk to you.”
She placed the pail down and went over to him, standing beside him.
“What is it?” she asked.