So, with a curse for them on his lips, and the dogged determination to save them in his heart, he nodded to Hardy, clasped the hand of Stuart, and turning Mowitza's head, started with that horrible burden back over the trail that would take a day and a night to cover.
The men were grateful for the bravery that had saved their lives, but burned under the brutal taunts that had spared nothing of their feelings. His execrable temper had belittled his own generosity.
He was a squaw man, but they had listened in silence and ashamed, when he had presumed to censure them. He was a horse-thief, yet the men who believed it watched, with few words, the figure disappear slowly along the trail, with no thought of checking him.
CHAPTER V.
HIS WIFE'S LETTER.
In the bosom of Rachel's family strange thoughts had been aroused by that story of Genesee's escape.
They were wonderfully sparing of their comments in her presence; for, when the story came to her of what he had done when he left her, she laughed.
"Yet he is a horse-thief," she said, in that tone of depreciation that expresses praise, "and he sent me his glove? Well, I am glad he had the grace to be sorry for scattering me over the floor like that. And we owe it to him that we see you here alive again? We can appreciate his bravery, even say prayers for him, if the man would only keep out of sight, but we couldn't ask him to a dinner party, supposing we gave dinner parties, could we, Tillie?"
And Tillie, who had impulsively said "God bless him!" from the shelter of her husband's arms, collapsed, conscience-stricken and tearful.