“You don’t look like a well one, anyway,” she said, looking at him carefully; “and you don’t look as I ever saw you look before. You are as hollow eyed as though you had been sick yourself for a month. Altogether, I think your coming out here to camp in the wild woods has been a big mistake.”
“It looks like it just now,” he agreed, and his eyes, tired and troubled, looked past her into the cabin where ’Tana lay. “Does she seem better?” 181
“Just about the same. Eight days now since she was took down; and the doctor, he said to-morrow would be the day to hope for a change, either for the better or—”
But the alternative was not a thing easy for the good soul to contemplate, and she left the sentence unfinished and disappeared into the cabin again, while the man outside dropped his head in his hands, feeling the most helpless creature in all the world.
“Better to-morrow, or—worse;” that was what Mrs. Huzzard meant, but could not utter. Better or worse! And if the last, she might be dying now, each minute! And he was powerless to help her—powerless even to utter all the regret, the remorse, the heart-aching sorrow that was with him, for her ears were closed to the sense of words, and his lips were locked by some key of some past.
His own judgment on himself was not light as he went over in his mind each moment of their hours together. Poor little ’Tana! poor little stray!
“I promised not to question her; yes, I promised that, or she would never have left the Indians with me. And I—I was savage with her, just because she would not tell me what she had a perfect right to keep from me if she chose. Even if it was—a lover, what right had I to object? What right to hold her hands—to say all the things I said? If she were a woman, I could tell her all I think—all, and let her judge. But not as it is—not to a girl so young—so troubled—so much of a stray. Oh, God! she shall never be a stray again, if only she gets well. I’d stay here digging forever if I could only send her out in the world among people who will make her happy. And she—the child, the child! said she would rather live here as we did than to have the gold 182 that would make her rich. God! it is hard for a man to forget that, no matter what duty says.”
So his thoughts would ramble on each day, each night, and his restlessness grew until Harris took to watching him with a great pity in his eyes, and mutely asked each time he entered if hope had grown any stronger.
By the request of Mrs. Huzzard they had moved Harris into the other room of the cabin, because of a rain which fell one night, and reminded them that his earthen floor might prove injurious to his health. Mrs. Huzzard declared she was afraid, with that room empty; and Harris, though having a partially dead body, had at least a living soul, and she greatly preferred his presence to the spiritless void and the fear of Indian occupancy.
So she shared the room with ’Tana, and the doctor and Overton used one tent, while the squaw used the other. All took turns watching at night beside the girl, who never knew one from the other, but who talked of gold—gold that was too heavy a load for her to carry—gold that ran in streams where she tried to find water to drink and could not—gold that Dan thought was better than friends or their pretty camp. And over those woes she would moan until frightened from them by ghosts, the ghosts she hated, and which she begged them so piteously to keep out of her sight.