“Another?” she smiled.
“Good!” he replied, drinking the second cup more rapidly.
“Now, we'll have some fish,” cried Mandy cheerily, “and then you'll be fit for your journey home.”
In twenty minutes more she brought him a frying pan in which two large beautiful trout lay, browned in butter. Mandy caught the wolf-like look in his eyes as they fell upon the food. She cut several thick slices of bread, laid them in the pan with the fish and turned her back upon him. The Indian seized the bread, and, noting that he was unobserved, tore it apart like a dog and ate ravenously, the fish likewise, ripping the flesh off the bones and devouring it like some wild beast.
“There, now,” she said, when he had finished, “you've had enough to keep you going. Indeed, you have had all that's good for you. We don't want any fever, so that will do.”
Her gestures, if not her words, he understood, and again as he watched her there gleamed in his eyes that dumb animal look of gratitude.
“Huh!” he grunted, slapping himself on the chest and arms. “Good! Me strong! Me sleep.” He lay back upon the ground and in half a dozen breaths was dead asleep, leaving Mandy to her lonely watch in the gathering gloom of the falling night.
The silence of the woods deepened into a stillness so profound that a dead leaf, fluttering from its twig and rustling to the ground, made her start in quick apprehension.
“What a fool I am!” she muttered angrily. She rose to pile wood upon the fire. At her first movement the Indian was broad awake and half on his knees with his knife gleaming in his hand. As his eyes fell upon the girl at the fire, with a grunt, half of pain and half of contempt, he sank back again upon the ground and was fast asleep before the fire was mended, leaving Mandy once more to her lonely watch.
“I wish he would come,” she muttered, peering into the darkening woods about her. A long and distant howl seemed to reply to her remark.