“So your name is Allie,” said Neale. “Well, Allie what?”
She did not respond to one out of a hundred questions, and this query found no lodgment in her mind.
“Will you braid your hair now?” he asked.
The answer was the low and monotonous negative, but, nevertheless, her hands sought her hair and parted it, and began to braid it mechanically. This encouraged Neale more than anything else; it showed him that there were habits of mind into which he could turn her. Finally he got her to walk along the brook and also to eat and drink.
At the end of that day he was more exhausted than he would have been after a hard climb. Yet he was encouraged to think that he could get some kind of passive unconscious obedience from her.
“Reckon you’d better stay over to-morrow,” suggested Slingerland. His concern for the girl could not have been greater had she been his own daughter. “Allie—thet was her name, you said. Wal, it’s pretty an’ easy to say.”
Next day Allie showed an almost imperceptible improvement. It might have been Neale’s imagination leading him to believe that there were really grounds for hope. The trapper and the cowboy could not get any response from her, but there was certain proof that he could. The conviction moved him to deep emotion.
An hour before sunset Neale decided to depart, and told Larry to get the horses. Then he went to Allie, undecided what to say, feeling that he must have tortured her this day with his ceaseless importunities. How small the chance that he might again awaken the springs of life interest. Yet the desire was strong within him to try.
“Allie.” He repeated her name before she heard him. Then she looked up. The depths—the tragic lonesomeness—of her eyes—haunted Neale.
“I’m going back. I’ll come again soon.”