The man’s jaws seemed literally to shut with a snap.
The Kid smiled with an effort. She was without personal fear. Her smiling blue eyes confronted and held him as she determined they should.
“I’m waiting,” she said. “If I wait here all night in the cold you’ll surely have to say it. What’s troubling?”
The girl’s power over the savage was tremendous. In a curious negative sort of way she understood that this was so. She never looked for the reason, simply accepting the obvious fact, and sometimes rejoicing in it.
For all her youth she understood the danger of his untamed spirit. And many times in her young life she had learned the value of the restraining influence she exercised over him.
The man knew his weakness in confronting her. There were times when his hot soul rebelled at his own powerlessness. It was that way now. But through it all a subtle gladness never failed to soften the irritation their clashes of will were wont to inspire. The truth was his utter and complete worship of her was irresistible. As an infant the Kid had caught the rebound of his devotion to his murdered wife, Pri-loo, and the perfect loyalty that had been his for her father. From the moment of the passing of these two creatures, who had bounded the whole of his life’s horizon, he had found salvation from the wreckage of his savage passions in the infant life that had been flung into his empty arms. Perhaps his worship of her was a sheer insanity. But it was an idolatry of parental purity.
He chafed under her insistence. Once he sought to avoid those compelling eyes. He gazed about among the shadows of the hut in a helpless fashion that was almost pathetic, whilst his great hand fondled the breech of his beloved weapon. But he returned to the magnet that never failed to claim him as surely held as any bond-slave.
“Tcha!” The exclamation was the man’s final, ungracious yielding. He flung his rifle aside and stood up. And in a moment he was rapidly pacing the narrow limits of the hut. “You ask him this? I tell you, ‘no.’ No good. So I tell you.” He paused and flung out an arm pointing in the direction of the river. “This white-man. Bimeby I go kill ’em all up.”
He remained pointing. His eyes were wide now and full of deadly purpose. A volcanic rage was consuming him.
The Kid’s eyes also widened for an instant. She remained unmoving. Then a smile dawned about her lips and presently illuminated her whole face. She raised one hand and thrust out a pointing finger at him, and a clear, happy, ringing laugh broke from her parted lips.