“This seems queer to you, Cody!” said Conover, trying vainly to smile. “But you’ll understand it better, maybe, and then you’ll not think so hard of me, perhaps.”
The woman paid no heed to this, but kept her dark eyes fixed on the face of the scout as he came slowly forward and took the stool.
Then she sat down, leaning back into the arms of a chair that was graced with a panther skin.
“There are some things that it is unpleasant to try to understand,” was Buffalo Bill’s comment, in response to the words of Conover.
The light of the fire reddened the white robes of the woman and gave a ruddy tinge to the cheek she turned toward it. She sat looking earnestly at the scout for a moment without speaking, and when she spoke her words were clipped and broken, showing that she had difficulty in using the language.
“It is very hard for me to say the Ainglish,” she declared, “and I know not hardly why it should be said, for all is fixed that you and your friends go not out of this place, but it is for him to please,” she nodded to Conover, “and he will tell you more things than what it is in my power to tell.”
Conover half lifted himself with a sudden, eager impatience, then dropped back.
“It’s this way, Cody,” he said: “she can’t handle the language like we can, for, though she knew it when she was a child, and I’ve taken the trouble to teach her what I could, it doesn’t come natural to her. I asked her to have you come here, that I could explain; for I don’t want you to think too hard about what has happened.”
When the scout did not answer, Conover went on hurriedly:
“It all goes back to a good many years ago, when I was captured by these Indians, and would have been killed, if she had not saved my life. I paid her for that, later, by marrying her. I couldn’t get away, and by and by I didn’t want to; I only wanted to stay with her. As I shan’t be able to make you understand that part of it, Cody, I’ll not try to; only I’ll say this, there came a time when I would have died for this woman, and that time ain’t past yet.