“But if all the other bars were beaten down between us, this one would keep me from ever shaking hands with him again. Why should it have been he out of all the camp? Oh, it makes my heart ache!”
While she sat thus, with miserable thoughts, others came to the door, and looking up, she saw Akkomi, who looked on her with keen, accusing eyes.
“No—it is not true, Akkomi,” she said, in his own jargon. “Keep silent for a little while of the things these people do not know—a little while, and then I can tell you who it is I am shielding, but not yet.”
“Him!” and the eyes of the Indian turned to the paralytic.
“No—not him; truly not,” she said, earnestly. “It is some one you would want to help if you knew—some one who is going fast on the path from these people. They will learn soon it is not I; but till then, keep silence.”
“Dan—where?” he asked, laconically, and her face paled at the question. 295
Had he any reason to suspect the dread in her own mind? But a moment’s thought reassured her. He had asked simply because Overton seemed always to him the controlling spirit of the camp, and Overton was the one he would have speech with, if any.
“Overton left last night for the lake,” explained Lyster, who had entered and heard the name of Dan and the interrogative tone. Then the blanket was brought to Akkomi—his blanket, in which the man had died.
“I sold it to the white man—that is all,” he answered through ’Tana; and more than that he would not say except to inform them he would wait for Dan. Which was, in fact, the general desire of the committee organized to investigate.
They all appeared to be waiting for Dan. Lyster did not by any means fill his place, simply because Lyster’s interest in ’Tana was too apparent, and there was little of the cool quality of reason in his attitude toward the mysterious case. He did not believe the ring she wore had belonged to Holly, though she refused to tell the source from which it had reached her. He did not believe the man who said he heard that war of words at her cabin in the evening—at least, when others were about, he acted as if he did not believe it. But when he and ’Tana chanced to be alone, she felt the doubt there must be in his mind, and a regret for him touched her. For his sake she was sorry, but not sorry enough to clear the mystery at the expense of that other man she thought she was shielding.