“Oh!” He saw that her face was set in resolute lines, so he looked away, his lids narrowing, while he thought of a plan which might turn his information to his own advantage.
“It isn’t about you at all,” he said slowly, sparring for time.
“Then why did you think of it?” She had him cornered now and he knew it, so he fought back sullenly, looking anywhere but at her.
“You haven’t given me a fair show, Jane. Up in camp we got to be pretty good pals until—until you found out I wanted to marry you. Even then you said there wasn’t any reason why we shouldn’t be friends. I lost my head that morning and made a fool of myself and you ran away and got lost. When the guides brought you back you were different, utterly changed. Something had happened. You wouldn’t have been so rotten to me, just because—because of that. Besides you forgave me. Didn’t I acknowledge it? And haven’t I done the square thing, let you alone, watched you from a distance, almost as if I didn’t even know you? I tell you, Jane——”
“What has this to do with——”
“Wait,” he said, his eyes now searching hers, his color deepening as he gathered courage, while Jane Loring listened, conscious that her companion’s intrusiveness and brutality were dragging her pride in the dust. “You went off into the woods and stayed five days. You told us when you got back to camp that you’d been found by an Indian guide and that you hadn’t been able to find the trail—and all that sort of thing. Everybody believed you. We were all too glad to get you back. What I want to know is why you told that story? What was your reason for keeping back——”
“It was true—” she stammered, but his keen eyes saw that her face was blanching and her emotion infuriated him.
“All except that the Indian guide was Phil Gallatin,” he said brutally.
The hands that held the reins jerked involuntarily and her horse reared and swerved away, but in a moment she had steadied him; and when Van Duyn drew alongside of her, she was still very pale but quite composed.
“How do you know that?” she asked in a voice the tones of which she still struggled to control.