“White men? No. Why do you ask?”
“I see tracks—not Dan’s tracks—not yours.”
“Made when?”
“Now—little while back—only little.”
Overton heard their voices, though not their words; and as ’Tana re-entered the wigwam, he glanced around at her with a dubious smile.
“That is the first time I ever heard you actually talking Chinook,” he observed; “though I’ve had an idea you could, ever since the evening in Akkomi’s village. It is like your poker playing, though you have been very modest about it.”
“I was not the night I played the captain,” she answered; “and I think you might let me alone about that, after I gave him back his money.”
“That is just the part I can not forgive you for,” he said. “He will never get over the idea, now, that you cheated him, and that your conscience got the better of you to such an extent that you tried to wipe a sin away by giving the money back.”
“Perhaps I did,” she answered, quietly. “I had to settle his conceit some way, for he did bother me a heap sometimes. But I’m done with that.”
She seemed rather thoughtful during the frying of the fish and the slicing down of Mrs. Huzzard’s last contribution—a brown loaf.