At that moment there rang in her steady voice a threat. Onawa looked up and met a suffering brown face and large quiet eyes. There was no menace there, nothing but longing for the dead and charity for the living.
She pressed a hand upon her burning throat. "Give me drink," she gasped.
Her sister poured some of the rice-water into a smaller vessel. This she stirred gently with a stick, watching the ruined face of Onawa with the same patient eyes. Outside the hut a flight of snow birds whirred from side to side.
"When you have drunk you shall go forth," said Mary Iden deliberately. "You shall seek to aid my enemy when he strives to strike down my husband."
Onawa gave a cry. In wondering over her sister's forgiveness she had forgotten La Salle.
"They may already have met," she muttered.
A stern smile crossed her sister's face.
"Can you not hear?" she whispered. "Yet you say you love the white priest. I have heard this long while the noise of sword striking sword. I listen without fear, knowing that no man can conquer my husband when no treachery hangs behind. Can you not hear the sounds of the fight?"
"My ears burn," cried Onawa. "I hear only the cold wind passing among the pines."
"They fight!" exclaimed her sister triumphantly. "My Richard shall rest to-day."