The hotel-keeper nodded, and just then Nevil Steyne, who at that moment had entered the bar, and had only gleaned part of the conversation, made his way over to where Seth was standing.
“Who is she?” he asked, fixing his cold blue eyes eagerly on the face of the man he was addressing.
“Don’t know,” said Seth shortly. Then as an afterthought, “Clothes marked M. R.” 50
The blue eyes lowered before the other’s steady gaze.
“Ah,” murmured Nevil. Then he, too, paused. “Is she alive?” he asked at last. And there was something in his tone which suggested a dry throat.
“Yes, she is,” replied Seth. “And,” he said, with unusual expansiveness, “I guess she’ll keep right on doing that same.”
Seth had again betrayed himself.
Nevil seemed half inclined to say more. But Seth gave him no chance. He had no love for this man. He turned on his heel without excuse and left the hotel to attend to the preparation of the buckboard himself.
On his way home that afternoon, and all the next day, the Indians were in his thoughts only so far as this waif he had picked up was concerned. For the most part he was thinking of the child herself, and those to whom he was taking her. He pictured the delight with which his childless foster-parents would receive her. The bright-faced little woman whom he affectionately called “Ma”; the massive old plainsman, Rube, with his gurgling chuckle, gruff voice and kindly heart. And his thoughts stirred in him an emotion he never would have admitted. He thought of the terrible lot he had saved this child from, for he knew only too well why she had been spared by the ruthless Big Wolf.
All through that long journey his watchfulness never relaxed. He looked to the comfort of his patient 51 although she was still unconscious. He protected her face from the sun, and kept cool cloths upon her forehead, and drove only at a pace which spared the inanimate body unnecessary jolting. And it was all done with an eye upon the Reservations and horizon; with a hearing always acute on the prairie, rendered doubly so now, and with a loaded rifle across his knees.