"No," she said. "But I goin' do what you tell me. I go to-night."
"Ah, that's right!" he said with a curious look of gratitude in his pain-haunted eyes.
Bela waited for him to say more—but waited in vain. For herself she would quickly have told him she loved him, had not her tongue been tied by Musq'oosis's positive instructions. And so the unhappy silence continued between them.
"Maybe somebody come this way," said Bela at last. "Mak' trouble. Come up by my boat."
Sam shook his head. "I've got to go back to camp now."
"You not see me again. You got not'ing say to me?" asked Bela despairingly. Her hand sought his.
Sam's instincts sprang up in alarm. "What could I say?" he cried. "What good would it do? Good-bye!" Snatching his hand out of hers, he retreated over the stones, refusing to look back.
When Sam entered the shack Joe faced him, scowling. "Where you been?" he demanded.
Sam, in no humour to be meek, made the time-honoured rejoinder.