“Please don’t,” said the man, hoarsely, looking as if he had awakened suddenly, and lifting himself up on one elbow painfully. “I’ll––I’ll be all right to-morrow, sure––surest thing you know, and––and I’ll take you down myself, with old––old Maigan.”
“Please hurry back to your house and tell your mother to come over as soon as she can,” Madge told the child. “Perhaps your father could go. I didn’t think of it at first.”
“Now you spik’ lak’ you know someting,” said the girl, with refreshing frankness. “I ’urry all right. Get modder quick.”
She started, her little legs flying over the snow, and Madge closed the door again.
She put a little more wood in the stove and sat down by the bunk. The man’s eyes were closed again. It was strange that he had heard her so distinctly, and that he had gathered the impression that she wanted to get to Carcajou on her own account. And––and he had said he would take her himself. Again 204 his first thought had been to do something for her, to be of service to her.
One of his hands was lying outside the blankets, and instinctively Madge placed her own upon it. She was frightened to feel how hot it was. The pulse her fingers sought was beating wildly. She felt glad that she was there. The man didn’t care for her and she––well, she supposed that she disliked him, but she wasn’t going to let him die there alone in a corner, like a wounded animal in some obscure den among the rocks. For the moment her own troubles were pretty nearly forgotten, for there was something for her to do. She had been but a useless by-product of humanity in the great melting pot of the world and had proved incapable of rising above the dross and making even a poor place for herself. But this man was young and strong and able, bearing all the marks of one destined to be of use. He had looked splendid in his efficient and sturdy manhood and therefore there was something wrong, utterly wrong and against the course of nature in his being about to be snuffed out before her very eyes, just because she had dropped that abominable pistol. It––it just couldn’t be!
She leaned forward again and looked upon his face, that was ashen under the coating of 205 tan. Once he opened his eyes and looked at her, but the lids closed down again and once more she became obsessed by the idea that she might have been very unjust to him, that she had perhaps insulted and wronged him. All at once the face she was looking at became blurred, but it was because she saw it through a mist of gathering tears. It had been easy, when she had bought that pistol, to think of killing a man; now it seemed frightful, abominable, and the resentment she had felt against the man was turning against herself in spite of the fact that it had been an accident, just a miserable accident.
Long minutes, forty or fifty of them, went by as she waited and listened. But presently Maigan, that had laid his head in her lap and was looking at her pitifully, as if he had been begging her to help the man he loved, rose suddenly and dashed to the door, barking. It proved to be Papineau and his wife, who was very breathless.
The man came in, looked at Hugo and rushed out again. He took the time to exchange his toboggan for Hugo’s, which was lighter and to which he hitched his three powerful dogs. Madge went to him.
“You’ll hurry, won’t you?” she cried. “I––I’m afraid, I’m horribly afraid. 206 Don’t––don’t come back without a doctor will you?”