Wearily she stumbled and crept forward until she could crawl beneath the low sodden branches.
The girl felt herself sinking into a thick darkness that was not the darkness of the night.
CHAPTER XVI
NATACHEE
“My gifts are only the gifts of an Indian, Miss Hillgrove; I see with the eyes of a red man, that is all.”
AS consciousness returned to Marta, her first sensation was that of physical comfort. She thought that she was in her own bed at home, awakening from a dream. Slowly she opened her eyes. Instead of her own familiar room she saw the rough, unhewn rafters, the log walls, and the rude furnishings of an apartment that was strange.
Wonderingly, without moving, she looked at the unfamiliar details—at the fireplace of uncut rocks with a generous fire blazing on the hearth—the lighted lamp on the table—the rough board cupboard in the far corner—the cooking utensils hanging beside the fireplace—and at the skins of mountain lion and lynx and fox and wolf and bear that hung upon the walls. It all seemed real enough, and yet she felt that it must be a part of her dream. She would awaken presently she thought—how curious—how real it was.
She put a hand and arm out from under the covers and touched, not the familiar blankets of her own bed, but a fur robe. The effect was as if she had come in contact with an electric wire. In the same instant she saw the sleeve of her jacket, and realized that she was not in her own bed at all, but was lying fully dressed on a rude couch—that her clothing was still wet from a storm that was not a dream storm, and that everything else was as real.
But where was she? Who had brought her to this strange place? Fully awake now, the girl made a more careful survey of the room, and this time saw hanging on a peg in the log wall near the fireplace a bow with a sheaf of arrows, and on the floor beneath a pair of moccasins.
“Natachee!”
With a shudder, as if from a sudden chill, Marta threw back the fur robe and sat up. She was not frightened. It is doubtful if Marta had ever in her life known real fear. But there was something about the Indian that always, as she had expressed it, “gave her the creeps.”