His queer tone kept her from answering at once, and she sat still, watching him adjust the stirrup, and then make a new torch of pine splits and knots.
"What do you call a torch in Chinook?" she asked after a little, venturing on the supposed safe ground of jargon.
"La gome towagh," he answered, splitting a withe to bind them together, and using a murderous looking hunting-knife on which the light glimmered and fretted.
"And a knife?" she added.
"Opitsah."
She looked up at him quickly. "Opitsah means sweetheart," she returned; "I know that much myself. Are you not getting a little mixed, Professor?"
"I think not," he said, glancing across at her; "the same word is used for both; and," he added, thrusting the knife in its sheath and rising to his feet, "I reckon the men who started the jargon knew what they were talking about, too. Come, are you ready?"
Assuredly, though he had hunted for her, and been glad to find her alive, yet now that he had found her he had no fancy for conversation, and he showed a decided inclination to put a damper on her attempts at it. He lifted her to the saddle, and walking at Mowitza's head, they started on their home journey through the night.
"The moon will be up soon," he remarked, glancing up at the sky. "We only need a torch for the gulch down below there."
She did not answer; the movement of the saddle brought back the dizziness to her head—all the glare of the torch was a blur before her. She closed her eyes, thinking it would pass away, but it did not, and she wondered why he stalked on like that, just as if he did not care, never once looking toward her or noticing how she was dropping forward almost on Mowitza's neck. Then, as they descended a steep bit of hill, she became too much lost to her surroundings for even that speculation, and could only say slowly: