As she stood stirring the pot he made another attempt to question her, trying again and again to get some explanation of how affairs had come to such a pass. But Laughing Mary merely jerked her head toward the bunk and said:
“Old—live hard—die.”
Thus she summed up what was, to her, the most ordinary thing in life.
It was the second time that he had tended a sick person in that house, so that Hugh already knew the full resources of the Jasper Peak cabin. In John Edmonds’ behalf he had worked feverishly, feeling nervous, excited, starting at every sound from his patient, wondering and puzzled as to what to do next. Now he felt himself entirely calm, at no loss what to do even though the state of this man was far more desperate than the other’s. He realized how much even a small amount of experience can do and how immeasurably older he had grown even in the month that had passed since he had been in this same place.
He came and went steadily until at last he had done all he could, then he sat down by the fire to wait, and to watch for results. Laughing Mary sat on her heels on the floor opposite him, nodding with drowsiness while both of them were watched unwaveringly, as the long hours passed, by the pale eyes of that helpless figure in the bunk, the broken, ruined Pirate of Jasper Peak.
And Laughing Mary, since no one pressed her for her story, or disturbed her dim, wandering mind by questions, finally began to speak. She startled Hugh first by rising suddenly, fetching something from the corner and flinging it upon his knee.
“Should be yours—make all the trouble,” she said brokenly.
Hugh, in wonder, held it up to the firelight. It was the brown bear’s skin!
He had learned by now that it was better to say nothing and so sat silent, without question or comment for a long time. He was rewarded by her telling him the whole truth at last in abrupt, queerly-spoken sentences, uttered at long intervals, often after an hour had gone by without a word. Little by little he was able to piece together all the facts that had puzzled him so long and to learn the truth about that adventure in which he had so unexpectedly become involved.
As he listened he knew at last that the vital figure in the whole affair was Laughing Mary. Nothing had happened as it should and every plan had gone awry, merely through the strange irresponsibility of an Indian woman’s mind. He and the Edmonds boys who did not know her well, and Oscar and Linda and Half-Breed Jake who did, had all been equally deceived. They had been drawn together by a strange web of circumstance of which she was the center. They had all of them had their own ambitions and hopes and misgivings and fears, and the rock they had all split upon was Laughing Mary.