He laughed, and ran toward her.
He could never have described exactly what happened. He saw her stoop swiftly, and sensed the stick that she caught up, without being able to stop himself. He heard the crack on his head that he did not feel, and night spread her black pinions with a swoop over the summer noon.
Ralph came to his senses to find himself lying in the bottom of the dugout, propped against folded blankets. A little in front of him he could see Charley's indifferent back, and Charley's arms rhythmically driving the paddle. Craning his neck to see if Nahnya was behind him, a most convincing, grinding pain from the crown of his head down through his spinal column arrested the movement. He closed his eyes, and lay quiet while it spent itself.
He became conscious of a sickening weight on his breast. Little by little recollection returned, explaining it. Life seemed like an ugly task to take up. To be flouted and scorned and knocked down by the woman he desired—a red woman into the bargain! He reflected bitterly that she must have told Charley what had happened. Ralph had a mental picture of the red-skin's shrug, and of being thrown contemptuously into the dugout. A deep, slow rage burned in his breast like a charcoal fire, poisoning his whole being with its fumes.
"If he shows anything in his face when he turns around, I'll smash him!" thought Ralph. "It would do me good to smash his sulky brown face. They shan't laugh at me, damn them!"
To add to the confusion inside him a little voice would make itself heard saying: "Served you right, old man! She's a good girl. She did just the right thing. You acted like a beast!"
This was what really maddened Ralph more than the recollection of his injuries. While he lay there so quietly with his eyes closed, inside him, so to speak, he was trying to shout down that damnable, persistent small voice.
"Ignorant, dull savages! Scum of the earth! How dare they set themselves up against a white man? I'll show them! I've been too friendly with them. Their heads are swelled. I'll put them in their places!"
By and by Nahnya asked: "You feel better now?"
He made believe to be still unconscious.