第7章

They said you wouldn't let anybody see you--and I determined Iwould.That's all!"She stopped,threw back her tangled curls behind her ears,shook the briers and thorns from her skirt,and added:"Well,I reckon you aren't afraid of a woman,are you?So no harm's done.Good-by!"She drew slightly back as if to retreat,but the elasticity of the manzanito against which she was leaning threw her forward once more.He again inhaled the perfume of her hair;he saw even the tiny freckles that darkened her upper lip and brought out the moist,red curve below.A sudden recollection of a playmate of his vagabond childhood flashed across his mind;a wild inspiration of lawlessness,begotten of his past experience,his solitude,his dictatorial power,and the beauty of the woman before him,mounted to his brain.He threw his arms passionately around her,pressed his lips to hers,and with a half-hysterical laugh drew back and disappeared in the thicket.

Mrs.Dall remained for an instant dazed and stupefied.Then she lifted her arm mechanically,and with her sleeve wiped her bruised mouth and the ochre-stain that his paint had left,like blood,upon her cheek.Her laughing face had become instantly grave,but not from fear;her dark eyes had clouded,but not entirely with indignation.She suddenly brought down her hand sharply against her side with a gesture of discovery.

"That's no Injun!"she said,with prompt decision.The next minute she plunged back into the trail again,and the dense foliage once more closed around her.But as she did so the broad,vacant face and the mutely wondering eyes of Wachita rose,like a placid moon,between the branches of a tree where they had been hidden,and shone serenely and impassively after her.

A month elapsed.But it was a month filled with more experience to Elijah than his past two years of exaltation.In the first few days following his meeting with Mrs.Dall,he was possessed by terror,mingled with flashes of desperation,at the remembrance of his rash imprudence.His recollection of extravagant frontier chivalry to womankind,and the swift retribution of the insulted husband or guardian,alternately filled him with abject fear or extravagant recklessness.At times prepared for flight,even to the desperate abandonment of himself in a canoe to the waters of the Pacific:at times he was on the point of inciting his braves to attack the Indian agency and precipitate the war that he felt would be inevitable.As the days passed,and there seemed to be no interruption to his friendly relations with the agency,with that relief a new,subtle joy crept into Elijah's heart.The image of the agent's wife framed in the leafy screen behind his lodge,the perfume of her hair and breath mingled with the spicing of the bay,the brief thrill and tantalization of the stolen kiss still haunted him.Through his long,shy abstention from society,and his two years of solitary exile,the fresh beauty of this young Western wife,in whom the frank artlessness of girlhood still lingered,appeared to him like a superior creation.He forgot his vague longings in the inception of a more tangible but equally unpractical passion.He remembered her unconscious and spontaneous admiration of him;he dared to connect it with her forgiving silence.If she had withheld her confidences from her husband,he could hope--he knew not exactly what!

One afternoon Wachita put into his hand a folded note.With an instinctive presentiment of its contents,Elijah turned red and embarrassed in receiving it from the woman who was recognized as his wife.But the impassive,submissive manner of this household drudge,instead of touching his conscience,seemed to him a vulgar and brutal acceptance of the situation that dulled whatever compunction he might have had.He opened the note and read hurriedly as follows:--"You took a great freedom with me the other day,and I am justified in taking one with you now.I believe you understand English as well as I do.If you want to explain that and your conduct to me,I will be at the same place this afternoon.My friend will accompany me,but she need not hear what you have to say."Elijah read the letter,which might have been written by an ordinary school-girl,as if it had conveyed the veiled rendezvous of a princess.The reserve,caution,and shyness which had been the safeguard of his weak nature were swamped in a flow of immature passion.He flew to the interview with the eagerness and inexperience of first love.He was completely at her mercy.So utterly was he subjugated by her presence that she did not even run the risk of his passion.Whatever sentiment might have mingled with her curiosity,she was never conscious of a necessity to guard herself against it.At this second meeting she was in full possession of his secret.He had told her everything;she had promised nothing in return--she had not even accepted anything.

Even her actual after-relations to the denouement of his passion are still shrouded in mystery.