Meantime Moreau had entered the cabin to get some food and drink to offer the sick woman. In a few moments he reappeared carrying a tin cup containing whisky diluted with water from the spring, and approached the woman sitting by the tree trunk. Her eyes were closed and she presented a deathlike appearance. The shawl she had worn round her shoulders had fallen back and disclosed a small bundle that she held with a loose carefulness. The man noticed the way her arms were disposed about it and wondered. Coming to a standstill before her, he said:
“I’ve brought you something that’ll brace you up. Would you like to try it?”
She raised her lids and looked at him, and then at the cup. As he met her glance he noticed that her eyes were a clear brown like a dog’s, and for the first time he realized that she might be young. She stretched out her hand obediently and taking the cup drank a little, then silently gave it back.
“You’ve had a pretty rough time I guess,” he said, holding the cup which he intended to give her again in a minute.
She nodded. Then suddenly the tears began to well out of her eyes, quantities of tears that ran in a flood over her cheeks. She did not sob or attempt to hide her face, but leaning her head against the tree, let the tears flow as though lost to everything but her sense of misery.
“Oh, poor thing! poor thing!” he exclaimed in a burst of sympathy, “you’re half dead. Here take some more of this,” and he pressed the cup into her hand, not knowing what else to do for her.
She took it, and then, through the tears, he saw her cast a look of furtive alarm toward her husband. She was within his line of vision and tried to shift herself behind Moreau.
With a sensation of angry disgust he understood that she feared this unkempt and haggard creature to whom she belonged. He moved so that he sheltered her and watched her try to drink again. But her tears blinded her and she handed the cup back with a shaking hand.
“It’s been too much,” she gasped. “If I could only have died! My boy did. Out there on them awful plains where there ain’t a tree and it’s hot like a furnace. And they buried him there—Bessie and he.”
“Bessie and he?” he repeated vaguely, his pity entirely preoccupying his mind for the moment.