“And yet you seem to enjoy the company of Saint Jimmy.”
The Indian rose to his feet and stood looking down upon the white man and something in his face—a shadow of a cruel smile, a gleam of savage light in his dark eyes—something—made Edwards rise and draw back a step.
“I do enjoy the company of Doctor Burton,” said the red man. “He is suffering. He is dying slowly. He is in torment. I am Natachee the Indian, why should I not enjoy the company of any white man who is like your Saint Jimmy or who can be made to suffer in any way?” For a moment he paused, then in a voice that made his words almost a command, he added: “I will return from Tucson in three days. In the meantime if it should be necessary for you to go into the upper part of this cañon, find my hut if you can and make yourself at home. You will be very welcome. If you should not find my place—if you should get yourself lost, for instance, have no fear, I will find you. But if I were you I would not leave my cabin and my friends down yonder unless it were absolutely necessary.”
Without waiting for a reply the Indian turned, and climbing the steep bank of the creek with amazing ease and quickness, disappeared.
Hugh Edwards went slowly back to his cabin.
Marta, who was watching, saw him coming and ran joyously to meet him.
CHAPTER XIX
ON EQUAL TERMS
She did not know what it was that had made the man she loved a fugitive from the law. She did not care. She was glad—glad because now her dream of happiness with him was possible.
AS Marta ran to meet him, Hugh Edwards could not but see that she was elated and happy. Not since that morning before the storm had she been in such a joyous mood. The depression, that since her meeting with the Lizard had been so marked, was gone. She was again her own frank, radiant self. But Edwards did not respond to the girl’s happiness. When she would have spoken of the sheriff and the escaped convict he coldly prevented her. Concealing every hint of emotion under a mask of formal politeness, he repelled every advance and received her loving overtures of sympathy and loyal comradeship in silence.
In those months when his friendship for Marta had ripened into love it had not been easy for Hugh Edwards to deny himself the happiness which the girl in her love had so innocently offered. With all the strength of his will he had fought to do the thing that he knew to be right. A thousand times he had told himself that to speak the words that would make her share the black shame of the fate that hung over him would be the part of a selfish coward. He must protect her from himself. When he had won gold enough to insure his freedom from the life of a convict, then he would tell her everything. With gold enough he could escape to a foreign land and Marta, when she knew his story, would go with him. But until he could assure himself that complete and final safety from the prison that threatened was within his reach, both for his own sake and for hers, he would not speak of his love.