"That's Shand's job," said Joe.
"Well, I ain't goin' to leave you two here," growled Shand. "There's plenty of other work, if it comes to that."
"All go clean the stable," commanded Bela. "I lak a clean stable."
"Now go cut plenty wood, so I can cook good," she ordered when they came back. "I want pine or birch. No poplar."
With Sam the case was a little different. When Bela addressed him it was with perhaps a heightened arrogance, but for the most part he managed to keep out of her way.
Not that he was indifferent; far from it. This new aspect of her exasperated him mightily. "She needs a master," he thought. The idea of taming her was delicious, seductive. "I could do it," he told himself, sneering at the obsequiousness of Big Jack et al.
Meanwhile he attended strictly to his own duties.
Sam, when he chose, had command of a face as wooden as Bela's. More than once Bela, when she was unobserved, flashed a hurt and angry look at his indifferent back in the distance. For several hours during the afternoon Sam disappeared altogether. During his absence the other men had an uneasy time at Bela's hands.
With all her haughty airs she did not relax any of her care of Husky. The others envied him his wound. Hour by hour he was visibly growing better. The fever had left him. He had got over his fear of Bela.
Now, by a twisted course of reasoning, characteristic of him, he adopted a proprietary air toward her. She was his, he seemed to say, because forsooth, he had been shot by her. This, it need not be said, was highly offensive to the other men.