She broke down and sobbed passionately, her grief and her love so commingled that it shook her to the very soul.
“I know,” he said, drawing her hot face up to him. He kissed her eyes and mouth, as her lips parted and the hunger of her girl-heart passed from her in the wonderment and sweet content of womanhood that gives and gives, and asks no other happiness.
“I DIDN’T KNOW, SWICKEY—I THOUGHT—THERE WAS SOMEONE ELSE”
Avery, hurrying down the river-trail, stopped abruptly. “Heard ’em shoot! Huh!” he muttered, as he saw them. “Reckon they was just celebratin’. This ain’t no place fur me. Guess I’ll go down the river a piece and then holler.”
CHAPTER XXX—JUST FUN
For weeks after the Lost Farm folk returned from the hunting that had ended so disastrously, Beelzebub wandered about the camp and the stable, poking his broad, sleek fighting-face into odd corners, and mewing plaintively as each nook disclosed an emptiness that he could not understand. Finally, he gave up looking for his vanished friend. When the snow came he resumed his old place beside the kitchen stove, philosophically dozing away the long winter days in luxurious content.
One December afternoon, as Avery sat weaving the mesh of a snowshoe, Beelzebub stretched himself, yawned, and sidled over to the old man. He crouched and sprang to his lap, rubbing a black nose ingratiatingly against his sleeve.
“Wal, Beelzebub, what’s ailin’ you now? Lonesome with jest me here? Wal, Dave and Swickey’s comin’ back afore long.” He glanced at the clock. “Int’rested in this here snowshoe? No. Don’t like the smell of it, hey? What be you askin’ fur? Smoke? Wal, Smoke’s gone huntin’—up a long trail where huntin’ ’s easy and they’s lots of it. Now I reckon you better hop down ag’in so ’s I kin finish this here job. Thar!”
The big cat rubbed sinuously against a table leg, circled the room, and crouched beside the stove again.