He turned and looked at her. The naïve simplicity of her language reassured him completely. "All right, señorita," he said, "I'll see that you get safe home. I'll go and arrange with Mahletonkwa now. I'm glad they treated you as well as they knew how. But say," he added, stooping over her and drawing the pistol completely out, "wouldn't you like me to leave this with you, just in case of accidents? There's always a sort of feeling of comfort in having a six-shooter handy."
"No, no," said she, making a movement with her hands as if to push the unaccustomed object away from her, "I've never had one in my life to use. I shouldn't know what to do with it at all."
Half reluctantly he returned it to its case, thinking what a difference there was between a girl like this and the average Western ranch-woman. American girls who lived on the frontier could shoot; they were more like men in that way; they were, comparatively speaking, independent; whereas this pretty creature depended solely upon him to protect her; so much the more reason, then, he argued with himself, for being cautious and diplomatic in his dealings with the Navajos now.
"Well then, señorita," he said, "you'd better stay here a few minutes longer while I go back and speak to Mahletonkwa. I guess it won't take us long to fix things."
He took her hand in his and held it for a moment. It lay there in his firm clasp with a confidingness that thrilled through him; the sensation came on him as a new discovery. "Why, this was what hands were meant for, to clasp each other." The ten long years of the unnatural divorce from womankind in which he had lived seemed to roll away as a dream. He had forgotten what a girl's hand was like; a quick impulse came on him to raise it to his lips, to clasp her in his arms and console her, only to be as quickly checked again. It would not be the fair thing; here she was relying entirely upon him for protection; it was for him to guard her, and to do no more. Anything else must wait—must wait till she was once more in safety, completely mistress of herself again. But the flood of new ideas for the future sped through his mind with lightning rapidity. In moments of danger and excitement the wheels of thought turn at a rate that seems incredible afterwards.
For one last, long minute he stood there, his hand locked in hers, looking into the deep, dark wells of her eyes. Of what joy had not his desolate past robbed him? Oh, why had he been blind to his chances all this winter, when he might have looked in her eyes like this any day; now he had found what made life worth living—and found it, perhaps, too late! Was it too late? He would see about that. With a final pressure of her gentle fingers, each one of which he seemed to feel separately pressing his in response, he turned away and strode out of the cave towards the group of Navajos in the meadow.
And who shall say what were the girl's feelings, left thus alone in the cave while her fate was being decided by the men sitting out there in the sun? Hope lifted her heart high,—hope after despair, like the blue sky after a thunderstorm, unimaginably bright, the hope of recovered freedom, of return to the longed-for hearth, of the embraces of her father and the dear ones at home. But there were fears too: after all, might not her deliverer fail yet? he had reached her,—could he rescue her? would he, single-handed, be able to prevail over these savages? Was there nothing she might do, weak woman as she was, to help him? Instinctively her fingers felt within her dress for the beads she wore, and fast flowed her prayers for his success; when she paused and looked anxiously out she saw him seated on the ground, the rifle in his lap, the Indians in their own style squatting round, and all faces grave with serious debate. It was her fate they were discussing, but it was his, too. In the intense sunlight she could mark the hard-set lines of his face; he was stubborn with the Indians about something or other; they wanted something he would not give? Why would he not give it. "Oh, give way to them," she could have cried to him. "Do let them have it—do. Only make peace, and let us return together"; peace, peace, peace, that was what she yearned for, peace and freedom! But she spoke no word, she knew that she must leave it to him, and once more she fell to her prayers.