The girl, cowering in her chair, heard no sound when the Indian left the room.
When morning came and Natachee again appeared he was his usual stolid, courteous self. But Marta knew now what fires of bitter hatred smoldered beneath the red man’s calm exterior. He made no reference to her statement that she could not go home, nor did the girl dare to repeat what she had said. She felt that she was powerless to do other than resign herself to the will of the Indian who seemed to find a cruel satisfaction in returning her to Saint Jimmy and Hugh Edwards.
When they had eaten breakfast, Natachee brought her horse.
The cañon creek below was still a roaring torrent, impossible to cross, but the red man led her by ways known only to himself around the head of the cañon and so at last to Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton.
For the next two or three weeks Marta avoided Hugh Edwards. She saw him frequently at a distance, and when he came to spend an evening hour on the porch, but she did not go to his cabin alone and always managed that her fathers were present when she talked with him in her own home. Edwards accepted the situation understandingly, and said no word, but worked harder than ever. Neither did she spend much time with Saint Jimmy, though she went nearly every day to see Mother Burton. The girl was very gentle with the two old prospectors and with tender thoughtfulness sought to make them feel that she was their partnership girl exactly as she had been ever since she could remember. But she would not go to Oracle, so either Bob or Thad was forced to go to the store whenever it was necessary for some one to bring supplies.
Doctor Burton blamed himself bitterly for the whole affair, but the Pardners insisted that the fault was theirs.
“You can see yourself, sir,” said Bob, “that if we’d raised the gal up knowin’ all the time what she had to know some day, it couldn’t never a-struck her like this.”
And Thad added:
“The God almighty truth is that me an’ my pardner was jest too darned anxious to shirk what was plain enough our duty, and so shifted the responsibility on to you. It was a mean, low-down trick an’ no way fair to you, an’ you jest got to see it that way. We know how you feel about not tellin’ her ’cause we’re feelin’ that way a heap ourselves, but it ain’t addin’ none to our comfort to have you tryin’ to shoulder the blame what belongs to us.”
The two old men were so miserable that Saint Jimmy’s sympathy for them lessened somewhat his own suffering, and the three agreed that the only thing they could do was, as Bob said, “to blame everybody in general and nobody in perticler and make it up to the girl the best they could.”