Then she uttered a half-strangled scream of terror and broke away from him; for across his shoulder she saw a face peering at her from the shadows of the over-hanging bushes above them, a white, desperate face, at sight of which she staggered back and would have fallen had Overton not caught her.
He had not seen the cause of her alarm, and for one instant thought it was himself from whom she shrank.
“Tell me—what is it?” he demanded. “’Tana, speak to me!”
She did not speak, but a rustle in the bushes above them caught his ear; and looking up, he saw a form pass lightly through the shadows and away from them. He could not tell whether it was an Indian, a white man, or even an animal scampering off that way through the 176 bushes. But anything that spied like that and ran when discovered was a thing to shoot at. He dropped his hand to his revolver, but she caught his arm.
“No, Dan! Oh, don’t—don’t shoot him!”
He stared at her, conscious that it was no ordinary fear that whitened her face. What did it mean? She herself had just come from the woods—pale, agitated, and with only a semblance of flower gathering to explain her absence. Had she met some one there—some one who—
He let go of her and started to run up the side of the steep bank; but swiftly as he moved, she caught him and clung to him, half sobbing.
“Don’t go! Oh, Dan, let him go!” she begged, and her grasp made it impossible for him to go unless he picked her up and carried her along.
He stooped, took her head roughly in his hands, and turned her face up, so that the light would fall upon it.
“Him! Then you know who it is?” he said, grimly. “What sort of business is this, ’Tana? Are you going to tell me?”