“Why?”
“Because I die if you send and kill my Hela,” she cried, with a world of despair in the simple declaration.
Wilder stood for a moment thinking deeply. He turned from the pathetic figure which somehow distracted his judgment. And he knew that he must decide quickly and make no mistake.
Finally he turned to her again. And the smile had returned to his steady eyes.
“Tell me so I can understand,” he said gently. “Tell me all there is to it, just the truth. Tell me who you are, and what you’re doing around this valley. And if you show me the whole thing right, and if your—Hela—did not kill, then you need have no sort of worry he’ll come to harm through me. You get that? Pass me the story, and make it short. But it’s got to be sheer truth.”
The woman’s hand remained buried in the bosom of her gown, and now she raised the other, and, a picture of submission and humility, she stood with it pressed over that which was hidden in her bosom. Her black eyes were less fearful, her lined cheeks were less drawn. Her whole appearance suggested the passing of something of the weight of terror under which she had been labouring.
She began her story at once. She spoke quietly, in contrast with her recent emotion, and in the curious broken phraseology which denoted her rare use of a tongue she otherwise knew well enough.
She told him that her man was Count Ukisama—Hela Ukisama—and that she was his wife, Crysa. She told him that he was the head, and original organizer of the people who were called the Euralians. She told him they came, as he had already guessed, from Northern Japan, and were engaged in a great traffic in furs with the Eskimo, which were secretly exported in whalers from the far northern harbours of the country. But she warned him this was not the whole trade. There was oil and coal. But most desired of all was the gold which they had found in these northern valleys for years.
Close questioning, as she proceeded, quickly showed Wilder that she was completely ignorant of the methods by which this traffic was carried on. She knew nothing of the hideous murder and piracy which was the whole story of these yellow marauders. Obviously she was told by her husband only those things he considered were sufficient for her to know.
When she came to the story of Marty Le Gros, and his gold “strike,” it was clearly different. Here she was apparently aware of every detail, and she made it plain that after the coming of Usak, and Ukisama had been so inhumanly blinded, she had forced her husband to tell her the true meaning of the terrible thing that had happened.