"She—she didn't tell you anything before she went?"
Ba'tiste shook his head.
"She would not speak to me. Nothing would, she tell me. At first I go alone—then yesterday, when the snow, he pack, I take Golemar. Then she is unconscious. All day and night I stay beside the bed, but she do not open her eye. Then, with the morning, she sigh, and peuff! She is gone."
"Without a word." It spelled blackness for Houston where there had been light. "I—I—suppose you've taken charge of everything."
"Oui! But I have look at nothing—if that is what you mean."
"No—I just had something here that you ought to have," Houston fumbled in his pockets. "She would want it around her neck, I feel sure, I when she is——."
But the sudden glare in Ba'tiste's eyes stopped him as he brought forth the crucifix and its tangled chain. The giant's hands raised. His big lips twisted. A lunge and he had come forward, savage, almost beast-like.
"You!" He bellowed. "Where you get that? Hear me, where you get that?"
"From her. She—"
"Then come! Come—quick with me!" He almost dragged the younger man away, hurrying him toward the sled and its broad-backed old horses. "We must go to the cabin, oui—yes! Hurry—" Houston saw that he was trembling. "Eet is the thing I look for—the thing I look for!"