“Quiet–quiet. The night. The storm is near. Aim-sa watches.”
Ralph turned his face out upon the blackness of the valley, following the direction of the woman’s gaze.
“Ay, storm,” he said mechanically, and his heart pounded within his breast, and his breath came and went heavily. Then, in the pause which followed, he started and looked towards the lean-to as a sound came from that direction. He was half-fearful of his sleeping brother.
Aim-sa’s eyes turned towards the rugged features before her, and her gaze was of an intensity such as Ralph could not support in silence. Words blundered unbidden to his lips, uncontrolled, and he spoke as a man who scarce knows what he is saying. His mind was in the throes of a fever, and his speech partook of the irrelevance of delirium.
“You must live with me,” he said, his brows frowning with the intensity of his passion. “You must be my wife. The white man takes a squaw, an’ he calls her ‘wife,’ savvee? Guess he ain’t like the Injuns that has many squaws. He jest takes one. You’ll be my squaw, an’ we’ll go away from here.”
A smile was in the woman’s blue eyes, for her memory went back to the words Nick had spoken to her that morning.
Ralph went on.
“Guess I love you that bad as makes me crazy. Ther’ ain’t nothin’ to life wi’out you.” His eyes lowered to the ground; then they looked beyond her, and he gazed upon the disordered condition of the room without observing it. “Nick don’t need me here. He can have the shack an’ everything, ’cep’ my haf share o’ the money. Guess we’ll trail north an’ pitch our camp on the Peace River. What say?”
Aim-sa’s eyes were still smiling. Every word Nick had spoken was vivid in her memory. She looked as though she would laugh aloud, but she held herself in check, and the man took her smile for one of acquiescence and became bolder. He stretched out his hand and caught hers in his shaking grasp.
“The white man loves–Aim-sa,” the woman said, softly, while she yielded her two hands to him.