“Yes,” he replied. “They will bring us no food to-night. In the morning they will come for me.”
“Oh, M’sieu, they cannot! They––” She gazed at him, not heeding the tears that suddenly came to her eyes and fell down upon her cheeks; and, as she looked, she understood what was in his mind. “Why do you not escape, M’sieu? There is yet time,––to-night! You are thinking of me, and I––I––Oh, I have been selfish––I did not know! We will stay 172 here, Father Claude and I. You need not think of us; they will not harm us––you told me that yourself, M’sieu. I should be in your way, but alone––it is so easy.” She would have gone on, but Menard held up his hand.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “no.”
Her lips moved, but she saw the expression in his eyes, and the words died. She turned to Father Claude, but he did not look up.
“I do not know,” said Menard, slowly, “whether the heart of the Big Throat is still warm toward me. He was once as my father.”
“He will not be here in time,” Father Claude said. “He does not start from his village until the sun is dropping on the morrow.”
The maid could not take her eyes from Menard’s face. Now that the final word had come, now that all the doubts of the unsettled day, now only half gone, had settled into a fact to be faced, he was himself again, the quiet, resolute soldier. Only the set, almost hard lines about the mouth told of his suffering.
“If we had a friend here,” he was saying, quietly enough, “it may be that Tegakwita––But no, of course not. I had forgotten about Danton––”
“Tegakwita has lost standing in the tribe for 173 allowing Lieutenant Danton to escape. He is very bitter, We can ask nothing from him.”
“No, I suppose not.”