“Say! You are sick, ain’t you?” he demanded, as her voice dropped to a whisper. “Say! Look here, Miss Rivers! Great snakes! She’s fainted!”
When she opened her eyes again, the rough roof of 264 her cabin was above her, instead of the blue sky. The women folks were using the camp restorative—whisky—on her to such good purpose that her hands and face and hair were redolent of it, and the amount she had been forced to swallow was strangling her.
The face she saw first was that of Max—Max, distressed and anxious, and even a little pale at sight of her death-like face.
She turned to him as to a haven of refuge from the storm of emotion under which she had fallen prostrate.
It was all settled now—settled forever. She had heard the worst, and knew she must go away—away from where she must see that one man, and be filled with humiliation if ever she met his gaze. A man with a wife somewhere—a man into whose arms she had crept!
“Are you in pain?” asked Miss Lavina, as ’Tana groaned and shut her eyes tight, as if to bar out memory.
“No—nothing ails me. I was without a hat, and the sun on my head made me sick, I suppose,” she answered, and arose on her elbow. “But I am not going to be a baby, to be watched and carried around any more. I am going to get up.”
Just outside her door Overton stood; and when he heard her voice again, with its forced independent words, he walked away content that she was again herself.
“I am going to get up,” she continued. “I am going away from here to-morrow or next day—and there are things to do. Help me, Max.”
“Best thing you can do is to lie still an hour or two,” advised Mrs. Huzzard, but the girl shook her head.