Pideau Estevan was unimaginative. Romance, the miraculous, were things without a shadow of appeal for him. Yet the thing that had happened had stirred him to a queer, incredulous amazement.
While he set his cooking pot back on his fire, and laid fresh fuel under it, he flung backward glances at the figure of his sister, Luana, sitting wearily huddled in his doorway. Then from her he gazed at the two children squatting on the ground confronting each other with a calm stare of voiceless, infantile interest.
Pideau felt the whole thing was as crazily remarkable as it well could be. Only that morning had he buried his wife. Only a brief half-hour ago had he been planning the difficulties resulting from his loss. And now—now Luana had appeared from nowhere. And every difficulty seemed to have melted into thin air.
It was amazing.
Exhausted as she was, Luana had told him in brief outline the story of the disaster that had befallen on the Sisselu Northern Railroad.
She had told of the death of the missionary and his wife, for whom she had been working. She had told him how she and the boy-child she had brought with her were the only survivors of the disaster. And she had told him of the thing she had determined, and now, at last, had finally accomplished.
Pideau hurried again to the tired woman when the leaping flame assured him that her food would soon be ready for her.
“An’ so you steal him?” he said, gazing down at the weary figure of the girl as she leaned against the door-casing.
Pideau was thinking hard. And his manner had in it a sort of playful cunning.
Luana stirred into full mental activity. Her dark eyes lit with sudden passion. Her whole body seemed to thrill with emotion.