“Let us go home,” she said, “you are good to me, but I am so tired.”
He obediently turned the canoe, and at that moment voices came to them from toward the river—ringing voices of men.
“It is possibly Mr. Haydon and others,” he exclaimed, after listening a moment. “We have been expecting them for days. That was why I could no longer put off giving you the letter.”
“I know,” she said, and her face flushed and paled a little, as the voices came closer. He could see she nervously dreaded the meeting.
“Shall I get the canoe back to camp before they come?” he asked kindly; but she shook her head.
“You can’t, for they move fast,” she answered, as she 241 listened. “They would see us; and, if he is with them, he—would think I was afraid.”
He let the canoe drift again, and watched her moody face, which seemed to grow more cold with each moment that the strangers came closer. He was filled with surprise at all she had said of Haydon and of the letter. Who would have dreamed that she—the little Indian-dressed guest of Akkomi’s camp—would be connected with the most exclusive family he knew in the East? The Haydon family was one he had been especially interested in only a year ago, because of Mr. Haydon’s very charming daughter. Miss Haydon, however, had a clever and ambitious mamma, who persisted in keeping him at a safe distance.
Max Lyster, with his handsome face and unsettled prospects, was not the brilliant match her hopes aspired to. Pretty Margaret Haydon had, in all obedience, refused him dances and affected not to see his efforts to be near her. But he knew she did see; and one little bit of comfort he had taken West with him was the fancy that her refusals were never voluntary affairs, and that she had looked at him as he had never known her to look at another man.
Well, that was a year ago, and he had just asked another girl to marry him—a girl who did not look at him at all, but whose eyes were on the swift-flowing current—troubled eyes, that made him long to take care of her.
“Won’t you speak to me at all?” he asked. “I will do anything to help you, ’Tana—anything at all.”