Brito saw it and changed his note. “D— you, you hussy!” he yelled. “I’ll choke——”
The pistol roared and he reeled back, clutching at his side. Then he crashed down.
For an instant Alagwa stared at him, noting the red stain that was widening on his shirt beneath the heart. Then she let the pistol fall and turned away. Staggeringly she made her way to Jack’s side and sank down beside him. Into his torn hunting shirt she slipped her hand till it lay above his heart.
No faintest throb rewarded her. No quiver of lip or eye negatived the red wound upon his brow. Silently her head fell forward. It was all over. Jack was dead. Without a gasp hope died.
ALAGWA SHOOTS CAPTAIN BRITO
CHAPTER XV
LONG Alagwa sat, staring into the face of her dead. She knew now, for once and ever more that he was her dead, hers, hers, hers alone. A week before she had not known that he existed. Four days before she had thought she hated him for the woe his people had inflicted upon hers. Two days before she had offered to fight with him to the death, but she had told herself that she had done this because he was facing her foes as well as his. Now, only a moment before, she had shot down her British kinsman, the ally of her people, in vengeance for his death. In dull wonder her thoughts traversed step by step the path that had brought her to this end, until in one blinding flash of enlightenment, she read her own soul. He was hers, her mate, created for her by Gitchemanitou the Mighty, foreordained for her in the dim chaos out of which the world was shaped.
And he was dead! He had never known her for what she was, had never thought to call her wife. To him she had been a comrade only, not bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And yet she knew that he had held her dear; day by day she had felt that he was holding her dearer and dearer. If she had been granted time——
But she had not been granted time, for he was dead. And she was left desolate. She could not even follow him to the Happy Hunting Grounds, for they were for men, not women.