Mabyn's only comment was a sort of grunt, which meant anything—or nothing.
Rina was encouraged to creep a little closer. "Oh, 'Erbe't, I love you!" she whispered. "I am loving you every minute! I so glad you marry me, 'Erbe't!"
The man took his pipe out of his mouth, and uttered his brief, jeering cackle of laughter. "That wasn't altogether a matter of choice, my girl," he said. "It was a little preliminary insisted on by your father and mother."
Rina hardly took the sense of this. "But you do love me, 'Erbe't? jus' a little?" she pleaded.
"You're all right, Rina," he said patronizingly. "I never was one to make much of a fuss about a woman."
Little by little gathering courage, she began to pour out her soul for the man she loved. "I never love any man but you, 'Erbe't," so ran the naïve confession; "the breed boys, they always come aroun' and show off. I not lak them. They foolish and dirty; they eat same lak cocouche; and they know not'ing; but they think themself so fine. They mak' me sick! My mot'er say to me; 'You eighteen year old, Rina; w'en you go to marry?' I say to my mot'er, 'I never marry a pig-man; I want to stay to you.'"
Her voice changed, borrowing the soft, passionate music of the nightingale she had never heard. "Then bam-bye w'en the spring come, an' we pitch by Ostachegan creek, an' the crocus flowers are coming up on Sah-ko-da-tah prairie so many as stars in the sky—then you come by our camp, 'Erbe't; and you so poor an' sick I feel ver' bad for you! An' you talk so pretty, and know so much, my heart him fly straight out of my breast like a bird, 'Erbe't; an' perch on your shoulder; an' him go everywhere you go; an' I got no heart any more. I empty lak a nest in the snow-time!
"So you stay to us," she went on, "and I mad to see all the men mock at you, an' treat you bad, an' mak' you eat after all have finished, and mak' you lie outside the fire. They t'ink themself better than a white man, hey! All the time you ask me to come away from the camp with you; an' you t'ink I don' want to come, but you don' know. Many, many nights I not sleep, 'Erbe't. I want so bad to come to the ot'er side of the tepee where you are, but I hold to my mot'er's blanket!"
The man looked up. "Hm! You did, eh?" he exclaimed. "If I had known!"
"But I t'ink I mos' not let you see I love you. So I mak' show I don' care at all. An' it hurt me ver' moch in my empty breast, 'Erbe't. But why I do it?—I want you so to marry me! an' bam-bye you marry me; an' I so scare and happy lak I was lose my head! Four days I married now! You not mad at me, 'Erbe't, 'cause I mak' you marry me?"