"Because of me?" wonderingly.
"Yes," with a fierce sob. "Because he knew I loved you.… I would not have shot you that night at Père Marquette's if I hadn't loved you! … Do you think a woman is made like a man? … George has done this! If he laid hands upon her, upon your holy lady I'm not to talk about …"
"Tell me about it," he commanded. "Has Kootanie George done this to you?"
"Dave!" Suddenly she had flung up her arms, staring at him strangely. "Do you think I am dying? He hurt me here … and here … and here." Her hands fluttered about her body, touching her throat, her breast, her side. The hands, lowered a moment were again lifted, stretched upward toward him, her eyes pleading with him. Slowly she was sinking back; he thought that in truth the woman was dying or at the least losing consciousness.
"Can't you help me?" she moaned. "Won't you hold me … I am falling.…"
Upon his knees he slipped his arms about her. He felt a hard stiffening of the muscles of her body, then a slow relaxing. He was laying her back gently, when she shook her head.
"Hold me up," she whispered, the words faint though her lips were close to his ear. "I'd smother if I lay down.…"
So he held her for a long time, fearing for her, at loss for a thing to do. The flickering firelight showed his face troubled and solicitous, hers half smiling now as though she were content to suffer so long as he held her. Presently she put her head back a little further, her eyes meeting his.
"You are good, Dave," she whispered. "Good to me. I have not been good to you, have I? Would you be a little sorry for me if I died?"
"Don't talk that way, Ernestine," he besought her. "You are not going to die."