"They sy she's tykin' on horful baht th' old man, pore kid!"
I thanked him, gulped down my coffee, and made for the tent. The flap was down, but I rapped on the canvas, and presently the dark face of Madam appeared. When she saw me, it grew darker.
"What d'you want?" she demanded.
"I want to see Berna," I said.
"Then you can't. Can't you hear her? Isn't that enough?"
Surely I could hear a very low, pitiful sound coming from the tent, something between a sob and a moan, like the wailing of an Indian woman over her dead, only infinitely subdued and anguished. I was shocked, awed, immeasurably grieved.
"Thank you," I said; "I'm sorry. I don't want to intrude on her in her hour of affliction. I'll come again."
"All right," she laughed tauntingly; "come again."
I had failed. I thought of turning back, then I thought I might as well see what I could of the far-famed Chikoot, so once more I struck out.
The faces of the hundreds I met were the same faces I had passed by the thousand, stamped with the seal of the trail, seamed with lines of suffering, wan with fatigue, blank with despair. There was the same desperate hurry, the same indifference to calamity, the same grim stoical endurance.