Holding Hal by the hand, he walked to the cabin and called: "Nat-u-ritch, Nat-u-ritch, come here, little woman. I want you."
CHAPTER XXIII
Nat-u-ritch, with slow impassiveness, obeyed. She came from the house with hardly a glance at the stranger. She had changed but little; still slender and childish in form, motherhood and the past five years seemed to have left no mark upon her save, perhaps, for a more marked wistfulness of expression, especially when she looked at Jim and the boy. Her life was complete; physical deprivations or disappointments mattered little to her. Taught by Jim the ways of civilization, she tried to apply them to her surroundings, but it seemed to her a waste of the golden hours when she might be following her master instead across the plains or playing with her child. It was almost piteous to see how she controlled the instincts of her savage desire for freedom, and in her primitive way cared for the little cabin so as to please Jim.
Malcolm Petrie noticed at once the difference between Nat-u-ritch and the other Indian women whom he had seen during the past days, and was impressed by it.
Hal, at sight of his mother, quickly responded to her out-stretched hand.
"Nat-u-ritch, this is my te-guin—my friend," and Jim indicated Petrie. She inclined her head to the solicitor and said, "How?" As her eyes met Petrie's shrewd glance an instinctive apprehension caused her to tighten her arm about the child.
"Te-guin—big chief from out yonder—over the big water," Jim explained, but her unflinching gaze made it difficult for him to go on. He whispered to Petrie: "I don't know how to do it—-I don't know how to do it." Then he summoned all his courage, and with a forced smile said, pleasantly, as though humoring a child, "Nat-u-ritch, te-guin—big chief—come for little Hal."
She flung her arms about the sturdy little fellow, and a sharp exclamation was her only answer.
"Pretty soon make Hal big chief. Touge wayno—te-guin—good friend—take Hal long way off." A shudder ran through her. She began to grasp what the stranger's presence meant. He was of her boy's father's race, and for too long she had forgotten, what in the beginning had so often troubled her, that Jim would some day want to return to his own people. This had been her great fear, but his kindness all these years had lulled to rest that ache of the early days.
While these thoughts tormented her, she could hear Jim still explaining. "Long trail, heap long trail—over mountains, heap big mountains—Washington."