"Your woman?" he said without looking at Appah, and deciding on the spot that she was entirely too good for that copper-colored malefactor.
"Are you Appah's squaw?" he asked Wah-na-gi, but in a kinder tone than he intended and which he felt was unmistakably unofficial. He was a young man and rather careful of his dignity.
"No," she replied with decision.
"Whether she is or is not," said Ladd sharply; "she's the Government's ward—my ward. I'm responsible for her, and I demand her."
The force of this was unanswerable. The captain paused for a moment. Then he addressed Hal, whom he liked.
"I don't see, Calthorpe, on what theory you take and detain this woman, unless," and he paused again, "unless you claim that she is your wife."
It was Hal's turn to feel that the air was filled with poisoned arrows. Every eye was upon him. Every one waited. It was his turn to speak. There was a clergyman standing beside him who in a half-dozen words could make them man and wife. It was perfectly true he had taken her from the care of the representative of the Government for what? The pause was interminable. The silence was maddening. Why didn't some one say something? His position was grotesque, impossible, cowardly. If he shrank from becoming a squaw-man, why didn't he leave the Indian woman to her own life and her own people? He felt as if an armor-piercing shell had burst in his brain, leaving his mind in ruins. He couldn't speak. He hadn't two consecutive words to put together. McCloud, the only one present who knew the truth, had been so conscious of the boy's predicament and so deeply grieved with and for him that he, too, shrank back into silence. The pause was obvious therefore before the clergyman crossed to the officer and began to speak.
"Thank God some one was talking," was Hal's thought, though he did not hear what McCloud was saying.
"Captain Baker," said the clergyman, "it is common report that certain interests are trying to get the asphalt lands belonging to the Indians and that Appah is betraying his people for a price. Wah-na-gi is that price. As you know, I have lived on the Agency, and I know of my own knowledge that this woman has been persecuted by this man with the connivance of the agent, and her honor and perhaps her life threatened. In order to protect her I have made an application to the Secretary of the Interior to adopt her as my ward."
"With her consent?" asked the officer.