Two on the Trail Part 25

At the first move he made in the direction of the hut, Natalie, whom he had thought unconscious, divined his intention.

"Garth! Not in his house!" she murmured feverishly. "I will not go in there! I will not!"

He paused in a painful perplexity. "But dearest, there is no other house," he said.

"Put me down in the open air," she begged. "It would suffocate me! I will not endure it!"

So Garth turned back among the trees. He strode over the dead leaves and the pine needles to the lake sh.o.r.e. Here, between the willows that grew thickly at the water's verge, and the heavier timber, extended an open strip of gra.s.s, still fresh and green. He laid his burden down upon it; and, rolling up his coat, put it under her head for a pillow.

He hastily cut away her sleeve, exposing the injury. The ball had pa.s.sed through, making a clean opening where it entered, and a jagged wound whence it issued. It was clear the bone was broken; but from the character of the bleeding, even Garth could see that the artery was uninjured. He brought water from the lake in his hat, and gently washed the wound; but even in this he doubted if he did right; for the water was cold--but he had nothing in which to heat it. The best he could do was to take the chill out of it by pressing the handkerchief between his hot hands.

Everything they possessed that might have been of service was two miles off; and might just as well have been a hundred; for Garth could not think of leaving her; and he shrank from the thought of inflicting the agony it would cause her to be carried so far. And even suppose they gained their own camp, the situation would be little improved; for how was he in his ignorance to undertake the delicate task of setting the shattered bone; of improvising splints and bandages; and supplying, what a glance at the ugly wound showed to be needful, antiseptics? A surgeon, whatever his skill, rarely dares trust the steadiness of his hand on the bodies of those he loves; what then was Garth to do, who had no skill at all?

He had his dark hour then, tasting ultimate despair. He sat beside her, gripping his dull head between his hands, and striving desperately to contrive, where there was nothing to contrive with. Oh, the pity and the wrong of it, that it was _she_ who must be hurt! he thought; and how joyfully he would have taken it himself to relieve her. _He_ bled inwardly; and the physical pain of the most hideous wounds could not equal the agony he experienced in his helplessness.

Meanwhile the wound momentarily changed. The arm began to swell and darken; and Garth knew there was no time to lose. He made one attempt to proceed, kneading the flesh of the arm very gently to explore the broken ends of the bone--but Natalie's piteous cry of pain completely unmanned him. He desisted, shaking like a leaf, and sick with compa.s.sion; and he knew he would never be able to do it.

What seemed like an age pa.s.sed; though it was no more than a few minutes. He was bending over her, doing what little he could to ease her pain; and with knotted brows rapidly considering, and rejecting, one after another, the desperate expedients that suggested themselves.

Suddenly looking up he perceived among the trees, at the distance of a few paces, Rina standing. Hot anger instantly welled up in his breast, and made a red blur before his eyes. Rina's s.e.x was no protection to her then. He picked up his gun.

Observing the action, Rina mutely spread her hands, palms outward. Her entire aspect had changed; the storm of pa.s.sion had pa.s.sed; and she stood contrite and sullen. It was impossible for the blindest pa.s.sion to shoot at a figure in such an att.i.tude. Garth lowered his gun; but he still kept it across his knees, and his face did not relax. The woman was loathsome to him.

"What do you want?" he demanded coldly.

Rina came a little closer. "I sorry," she said sulkily--like a child unwillingly confessing a fault. "I t'ink I go looney for a while. I not hear right. I t'ink she try to tak' my 'osban' from me!"

Garth glanced at the suffering Natalie with contracted brows. "That's all very well!" he said bitterly. "But it can't undo what's done!"

"I can mak' her well, maybe," said Rina, still affecting indifference.

"I know what to do. My mot'er, she teach me. If you let me look at her, I tell you."

A wild hope sprang up in Garth's breast. If the girl were only able to help Natalie, his hate of her could very well content itself a while.

But dare he trust her? With keen, hard eyes he sought to read her face.

Her own eyes avoided his; and she made a picture of savage indifference; but as he looked he saw two great tears roll down her cheeks. In his desperate situation it was well worth the risk.

Raising his gun, he said coldly: "You may look at her. If you try to injure her, I will send a bullet through your head."

Receiving the permission, Rina came forward, careless of the threatening gun; and dropped to her knees beside Natalie. She examined the wound on both sides; and felt of the fracture with delicate fingers. To judge of the normal position of the bones, she manipulated her own arm. Garth never took his eyes from her; but she was tenderer with the patient than he could have been.

Finally she raised a mask-like face to Garth. "I can fix it," she said.

"If you let me."

Whatever her private feelings were, she had a confident air, that could not but convey some a.s.surance to him. He nodded silently; after what he had suffered, he scarcely dared believe in such good fortune.

Rina quickly rose. "You mak' a fire to heat water," she said coolly. "I go to bring everyt'ing."

With the words, she was gone among the trees; and Garth, overjoyed to be able to do something with his hands, hastened to build a fire.

Before he really expected her, she was back with what she needed, a pot for heating the water, a basin, several kinds of herbs, some strips of yellowed linen for bandages, a blanket and a knife. While the water was heating, she cut a deep segment of the smooth white bark of a young poplar for a splint--the curve of it was judged to a nicety to fit Natalie's arm. During the operation of setting the bone, Garth watched her unswervingly, clenching his teeth to bear the spectacle of Natalie's agony. For every pang of hers he suffered a sharper; the sweat coursed down his face.

But at last it was over; the wound washed and fomented with bruised leaves, the splint fitted snug, and the whole neatly bandaged. Natalie, wrapped in the blanket, soon fell into the sleep of exhaustion.

Rina looked at the pale and shaken Garth with an odd expression. "If you have whiskey, better tak' a drink," she suggested.

Garth had his flask; and he obeyed without question.

Throughout the operation, Rina had preserved an admirable, professional air, intent and impersonal; and when necessary she had brusquely ordered Garth to help her. Now that it was all over her face altered; she continued to kneel at Natalie's side, gazing at her soft hair, and the whiteness of her skin with a kind of sad and jealous wonder.

Garth on the alert at the change, which portended he knew not what explosion of pa.s.sion in the savage woman's breast, ordered her from Natalie's side. She obeyed, resuming her sullen mask, but lingered near him, plainly full of some question she desired to ask. He observed for the first, a purpling bruise above her temple. Rina saw his eyes upon it, and her colour changed.

"I run against a tree," she hastily volunteered.

At the same time her hand stole to her throat to hide certain marks on its dusky roundness. Garth knew instinctively that she was loyally lying. Mabyn had beaten her. He wondered how far the wish to serve the woman she had injured was Rina's own impulse and how far she had been forced to it by Mabyn. He began dimly to conceive that the red woman had good qualities.

At last the question on her breast was spoken. "Who is she?" she asked, pointing sullenly at the sleeping Natalie.

Garth rapidly considered what he should answer. He could not pretend to himself that he had forgiven the woman; but since Natalie's pain was mitigated he was cooler; and his sense of justice forced it home on him that Rina, too, had been through her ordeal. In his present desperate situation, his only chance of a.s.sistance lay in her--Mabyn was an egomaniac, and utterly irresponsible. Frankness had served Garth in good stead before this; and finally he told her the plain truth in such terms that she could understand.

"This feeling Mabyn has for her," he insisted in the end, "is only a pa.s.sing one. If we can get her out of his sight all will go on as before."

Rina nodded. Her inscrutable face softened a little, he thought. "I on'erstan' now," she said quietly. "So I not go crazy wit' t'inking about it."

Garth was glad he had told her.

Rina stood studying him with her strange and secret air. "You love her ver' moch," she said suddenly, pointing to Natalie.

Garth bent over the sleeping figure in a way that answered her better than words.

"I t'ink she love you too," said Rina gravely. "When I 'urt her, she try not to cry because it 'urt you so bad."

A slow red crept under Garth's skin. He hated to betray himself under the eyes of the red woman; and he bustled about, averting his face from her. "When can she be moved?" he asked, brusquely changing the subject.

Rina shook her head. "I not know," she said. "Maybe she have fever.

Three, four week maybe."

Garth's heart sunk heavily, as he considered their scanty supplies, the approach of winter--and, more dangerous still, the fruitful opportunities of conflict the weeks would offer to four souls so strangely opposed, and so strangely bound together in the wilderness.

"What is Mabyn doing now?" he asked suddenly.

Rina's face instantly became as blank as plaster. "I not talk to you about him," she said coolly.

Garth was conscious of receiving a rebuke.

"But I help you," she added presently. "I go bring your outfit in."

Before she went, she brewed a draught for Natalie with some of the herbs she had brought; and instructed Garth to administer it when she woke.

For an instant all Garth's suspicions returned; and he looked at her hard. Rina, divining his thought, coolly lifted the pail to her lips, and drank of it. Once more he felt himself rebuked.

Left alone, his thoughts reverted to Mabyn. What would he have been plotting all this time? he wondered; what stand would he take in this new posture of affairs? It was too much to hope, he decided, that one so selfish and so jealous could be persuaded to sink his animosity against Garth, for the purpose of serving Natalie while she lay injured. Garth's business had made him more or less familiar with the workings of the diseased ego; and he was convinced that Mabyn, if for nothing else, hated him intolerably for having been the spectator of his repulse by Natalie.