“I had forgotten,” said Loseis.
Without changing a muscle of her face, or raising her voice at all, Loseis shifted to English. “Etzooah,” she said, “the Slavis are saying to each other that you were false to your own people. They are angry because you brought Gault here. . . . Do not move suddenly or you are a dead man. Mahtsonza is hiding behind the corner of the store with a gun in his hands waiting to shoot you!”
Etzooah’s copper face changed to a livid ash-color. Suddenly with a single movement he bounded to his feet, and inside the door of the store. Loseis stood up with a scornful laugh.
“Go back to your master,” she said, pointing. “I only wished to find out if you could speak English. You are a spy!”
Etzooah slunk away. Still only half convinced that he had been tricked, he kept glancing fearfully over his shoulder.
Loseis was filled with a fierce exultation. Now she knew! No more indecision. To be sure, when she reflected, her solitary and desperate situation might well appall the stoutest heart; but at the moment she was only aware of the relief of getting rid of that suffocating sense of futility. Now she would know what to do! Her father was right about Gault; and her own heart had not played her false.
She closed the store, and took Mary-Lou back to their house.
Loseis’ nature knew no half measures. Having recognized Gault as her enemy, she was prepared to fight. She did not blink the danger of her position. She no longer had any illusions about the fate of those letters which the trader had so impressively despatched outside. She realized that Gault himself stood between her and any possible succor, and that he intended to keep her cut off from her kind until he should have obtained what he wanted. Well, she quickly resolved upon a course of action. Her only hope lay in bringing her wits into play. Gault must not be allowed to suspect that she saw through his schemes. Etzooah, she knew, would never dare confess to his master that he had betrayed himself. There was a fatuous side to Gault’s character; and she must play on that. Perhaps through his own folly she might defeat him in the end.
Suddenly Loseis clapped her hands to her head with a cry of dismay. She had suddenly recollected that all her father’s papers were in his desk in the room where Gault was sleeping, and the desk was not even locked! While he was alive of course, nobody would have dared venture into Blackburn’s room uninvited, much less touch his papers. Loseis beat her fists against her head, and groaned in bitterness. What an ignorant childish fool she had been to neglect a thing so important!
She ran to the window to look across at the men’s house. She could not tell whether Gault was within or not. On the spur of the moment she sent Mary-Lou across to invite Gault and Moale to supper with her. Mary-Lou returned to say that the two men had ridden up to the lake (ten miles distant) to have a look at the Slavi village there. Loseis then ventured across herself.