“You coward!”
“That’s twice you’ve called me that,” he cried, his face flushing darkly and his eyes glittering.
“You’ll crawl on your knees to me and beg pardon before I’m through with y’u, my beauty. Y’u’ll learn to lick the hand that strikes y’u. You’re mine—mine to do with as I please. Don’t forget that for a moment. I’ll break your spirit or I’ll break your heart.”
His ferocity appalled her, but her brave eyes held their own. With an oath he turned on his heel and struck the palms of his hands together. An Indian squaw came running from one of the cabins. He flung at her a sentence or two in the native tongue and pointed at his captive. She asked a question impassively and he jabbed out a threat. The squaw nodded her head, and motioned to the girl to follow her.
When Helen Messiter was alone in the room that was to serve as her prison she sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands in a despair that was for the moment utter.
CHAPTER XI.
A RESCUE
Helen Messiter was left alone until darkness fell, when the Cheyenne squaw brought in a kerosene lamp and shortly afterward her supper. The woman either could not or would not speak English, and her only answer to her captive’s advances was by sullen grunts. At the expiration of half an hour she returned for the dishes, locking the door after her when she left.
The room itself was comfortable enough. It was evidently Bannister’s own, judging from its contents. Two or three rifles hung in racks. On top of the bookcase was a half-filled tobacco pouch and several pipes, all of them lying carelessly on a pile of music which ran from Verdi to ragtime. In his books she found the same shallow catholicity. Side by side with Montaigne’s “Essays,” a well-worn Villon in thé original, Stevenson’s “Letters” and “Anna Karenina,” dozens of paper-covered novels, mostly the veriest trash, held their disreputable own. Some of them were French, others detective stories, still others melodramatic tales of love. The piano was an expensive one, but not in the best of tune. Everything in the room contributed to the effect of capacity untempered by discipline and discrimination. Plainly he was a man of taste who had outraged and deadened his power of differentiation by abuse.
For Helen the silent night was alive with alarms. The moaning of the wind, the slightest rustle outside, the creaking of a board, were enough to set her heart wildly beating. She did not undress, but by the light of her dim, ragged wick sought for composure from the pages of Montaigne and Stevenson. When the first gray day streaks came she was still reading, but with their coming she blew out her light and lay down. She fell asleep at once, and it was five hours later that the knock of her attendant awakened her from heavy slumber.
With the bright sunlit day she was again mistress of her nerves, prepared to meet resolutely whatever danger might confront her. But the morning passed quietly enough, and after lunch the Indian woman led her into the little valley promenade in front of the buildings and sat down on a rock while her captive enjoyed the sunshine.