May-may-gwán did not reply, but left the tent. In a moment she reappeared carrying forked switches, a square of white birch-bark, and a piece of charcoal.
"Thus it is," said she rapidly. "These be the leg bones and this the bone of the ankle. This bone is broken, so. Thus it is held in place by the skill of the Little Father. Thus it is healing, with stiffness of the muscles and the gristle, so that always Eagle eye will walk like wood, and never will he run. The Little Father has told May-may-gwán what there is to do. It is now the time. Fifteen suns have gone since the hurt."
She spoke simply. Dick, interested in spite of himself, stared at the switches and the hasty charcoal sketch. The dead silence hung for a full minute. Then the young man fell back from his elbow with an enigmatical snort. May-may-gwán assumed consent and set to work on the simple yet delicate manipulations, massages, and flexings, which, persisted in with due care lest the fracture slip, would ultimately restore the limb to its full usefulness.
Once a day she did this, thrice a day she brought food. The rest of the time she was busy about her own affairs; but never too occupied to loop up a section of the tepee covering for the purpose of admitting fresh air, to bring a cup of cold water, to readjust the sling which suspended the injured leg, or to perform an hundred other little services. She did these things with inscrutable demeanour. As Dick always accepted them in silence, she offered them equally in silence. No one could have guessed the thoughts that passed in her heart.
At the end of a week Dick raised himself suddenly on his elbow.
"Some one is coming!" he exclaimed, in English.
At the sound of his voice the girl started forward. Her mouth parted, her eyes sparkled, her nostrils quivered. Nothing could have been more pathetic than this sudden ecstatic delight, as suddenly extinguished when she perceived that the exclamation was involuntary and not addressed to her. In a moment Sam Bolton appeared, striding out of the forest.
He unslung his little pack, leaned his rifle against a tree, consigned to May-may-gwán a dog he was leading, and approached the wigwam. He seemed in high good humour.
"Well, how goes it?" he greeted.
But at the sight of the man striding in his strength Dick's dull anger had fallen on him again like a blanket. Unreasonably, as he himself well knew, he was irritated. Something held him back from the utterance of the hearty words of greeting that had been on his tongue. A dull, apathetic indifference to everything except the chains of his imprisonment enveloped his spirit.