[CHAPTER XVII]
THE ORDEAL
With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals blown upon by the wind of anger.
“None of that! Get back there—you!” Bim’s voice was scarcely audible but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble. Then to Benicia:
“Young woman, you’re making the mistake of your life. I’m a’mighty sorry for you, an’ you are going to be right regretful yourself when you have time to think.” Grant made a step forward to lay a checking hand on his friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted.
“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!—the dagger from the wall of his chamber—” Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration.
“You—I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part. Then fate brings you to this house wounded—snatched from death. An escaped convict from a chain gang—you yourself admitted as much just last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father? Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!”
“Señorita O’Donoju—” Grant’s effort to check her was fruitless, for she had whirled upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my father—unknown to me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill—and then to rob?”
The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings, illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the numbness Benicia’s accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her gently: