The girl looked with difficulty into his great, drawn face. Ned stiffened, wondering if the moment of crisis were at hand at last. Lenore watched appalled, but the native went on about her tasks as if she hadn’t heard.
“You can’t expect—much friendship—from a prisoner,” Bess told him brokenly. Her face, so white in the yellow lantern light, her trembling lips, most of all the appeal for mercy in her child’s eyes—raised to this beast compared with whom even the North was merciful—wakened surging, desperate anger in Ned. The room turned red before his eyes, his muscles quivered, and he was rapidly reaching that point wherein his self-control, on which life itself depended, was jeopardized. Yet he must hold himself with an iron hand. He must wait to the last instant of need. Everything depended on that, in avoiding the crisis until he had made some measure of preparation.
The loss of his long-bladed skinning knife increased the odds against him. He had put considerable reliance in its hair-splitting blade; and since he had perfected the sheath of caribou leather whereby he could keep it open in his pocket, he had hoped that it might be the means of freedom. In the three days since its loss he had been obliged to carry one of the butcher knives from the supplies at Forks cabin,—a sharp enough implement, but without the dagger point that would be so deadly in close work. However, he moved his arm so that he could reach the hilt of the knife in one motion.
But with the uncanny watchfulness of a cat Doomsdorf saw the movement. For one breath Ned’s life was suspended by a hair: Doomsdorf’s first impulse was to seize his pistol and bore the younger man through and through with lead. It was a mere madman’s whim that he refrained: he had a more entertaining fate in store for Ned when affairs finally reached a crisis. He leered down in contempt.
“Your little friend seems to be getting nervous,” he remarked easily to Bess. “So not to disturb him further, let’s you and I go to the new cabin. I’ve taken some fine pelts lately—I want you to see them. You need a new coat.”
He seemed to be aware of the gathering suspense, and it thrilled his diseased nerves with exultation. But there was, from his listeners, but one significant response at first to the evil suggestion that he made with such iniquitous fires in his wild eyes and such a strange, suppressed tone in his voice. Bess’s expression did not change. It had already revealed the uttermost depths of dread. Ned still held himself, cold, now, as a serpent, waiting for his chance. But the squaw paused a single instant in her work. For one breath they failed to hear the clatter of her pans. But seemingly indifferent, she immediately went back to her toil.
Bess shook her head in desperate appeal. “Wait till morning,” she pleaded. “I’m tired now——”
Ned saw by the gathering fury of their master’s face that her refusal would only bring on the crisis, so he leaped swiftly into the breach. “Sure, Bess, let’s go to look at them,” he said. “I’m anxious to see ’em too——”
Doomsdorf whirled to him, and his gaze was as a trial of fire to Ned. Yet the latter did not flinch. For a long second they regarded each other in implacable hatred, and then Doomsdorf’s sudden start told that he had been visited by inspiration. His leering look of contempt was almost a smile. “Sure, come along,” he said. “I’ve got something to say to you too. To spare Lenore’s feelings—we’ll go to the other cabin.”
Ned was not in the least deceived by this reference to Lenore. Doomsdorf had further cause, other than regard for Lenore’s sensibilities, for continuing their conversation in the other cabin. What it was Ned did not know, and he dared not think. And he had a vague impression that while he and Doomsdorf had waged their battle of eyes, Bess had mysteriously moved from her position. He had left her just at Doomsdorf’s right; when he saw her again she was fully ten feet distant, within a few feet of the cupboards where the squaw kept many of the food supplies, and now was busy with her parka of caribou skin.