Wayland, without really knowing anything about it, suspected that he owed his life to her intervention, and this belief deepened the feeling of admiration which he had hitherto felt toward her. He listened to her at work around the fire with a deepening sense of his indebtedness to her, and when she looked in to ask if she could do anything for him, his throat filled with an emotion which rendered his answer difficult.
As his mind cleared he became very curious to know precisely what had taken place, but he did not feel free to ask her. “She will tell me if she wishes me to know.” That she had vanquished Belden and sent him on his way was evident, although he had not been able to hear what she had said to him at the last. What lay between the enemy’s furious onslaught and the aid he lent in making the camp could only be surmised. “I wonder if she used her pistol?” Wayland asked himself. “Something like death must have stared him in the face.”
“Strange how everything seems to throw me ever deeper into her debt,” he thought, a little later. But he did not quite dare put into words the resentment which mingled with his gratitude. He hated to be put so constantly into the position of the one protected, defended. And yet it was his own fault. He had put himself among people and conditions where she was the stronger. Having ventured out of his world into hers he must take the consequences.
That she loved him with the complete passion of her powerful and simple nature he knew, for her voice had reached through the daze of his semi-unconsciousness with thrilling power. The touch of her lips to his, the close clasp of her strong arms were of ever greater convincing quality. And yet he wished the revelation had come in some other way. His pride was abraded. His manhood seemed somehow lessened. It was a disconcerting reversal of the ordinary relations between hero and heroine, and he saw no way of re-establishing the normal attitude of the male.
Entirely unaware of what was passing in the mind of her patient, Berrie went about her duties with a cheerfulness which astonished the sufferer in the tent. She seemed about to hum a song as she set the skillet on the fire, but a moment later she called out, in a tone of irritation: “Here comes Nash!”
“I’m glad of that,” answered Wayland, although he perceived something of her displeasure.
Nash, on his way to join the Supervisor, raised a friendly greeting as he saw the girl, and drew rein. “I expected to meet you farther down the hill,” he said. “Tony ’phoned that you had started. Where did you leave the Supervisor?”
“Over at the station waiting for you. Where’s your outfit?”
“Camped down the trail a mile or so. I thought I’d better push through to-night. What about Norcross? Isn’t he with you?”
She hesitated an instant. “He’s in the tent. He fell and struck his head on a rock, and I had to go into camp here.”