The Heart of Unaga Part 36

Keeko's eyes flashed in the direction of the canoes. Inspiration leapt.

Where were _her_ boys? They had no concern with the work of the fort.

They were _hers_. Something of the teachings and instincts of the life she had learned stirred her to action. Light as a deer she ran to the landing, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a rifle lying in one of the boats. It was the instinct of self-preservation. But it was also an expression of her determination to enforce her rights--if need be.

There was no hesitation. Keeko had learned so much in the past three years. She knew the man who was her step-father. She knew his brutality to Indians, and she suspected more. She hated the thought in her mind now. She even feared it. But she was determined.

She was late by the seconds it had taken her to reach the spot. It was a spot she knew well enough. A single tree standing by itself just behind the fort. She found a group of Indians gathered about it looking on in apparent indifference. Above their heads, in their midst, she beheld the rise and fall of a heavy quirt.

Into the midst of this gathering she thrust her way. And, in a moment, her worst suspicions were realized. Her boy, Snake Foot, was bound to the tree-trunk. Bared to the waist, cowering but silent, he was shrinking under the cruel blows of the quirt. Nicol, his dark eyes blazing with a merciless fury, was flinging every ounce of his strength into each blow of the terrible weapon in his hand. Keeko's horrified eyes missed nothing. She saw that Little One Man and Med'cine Charlie were amongst the crowd. It was all she needed.

In a moment she had flung herself in front of her Indian's bleeding body, and whether by design or chance the muzzle of her rifle was pointing and covering her step-father.

Her eyes were on his inflamed face. They were confronting him without a sign of fear or any other emotion.

"Don't let that quirt fall on me!" she cried. "I want Snake Foot right now, and I'm going to have him. Little One Man," she went on, without removing her eyes from the furious face of the man still flourishing his quirt aloft, "just cut him adrift right away, and hustle down to the landing. We're going to pull out--sharp."

But Nicol had recovered from his surprise, and his mad fury suddenly leapt into full flood again.

"Stand aside, girl!" he roared violently. "This swine refused to obey my orders and I'm going to teach him--and anyone else--who's master here.

Get out of my way," he bellowed with an ominous threat of the quirt.

Keeko stood her ground. Her two boys had closed in towards her. They were on either side of her, and a wicked gleam lit the eyes of Little One Man as he watched the man with his upraised weapon. Keeko knew her step-father had been drinking. The signs were plain enough to her. They were all too familiar. But there was no yielding in her, whatever the consequences of her act.

"Cut him adrift," she cried sharply, to the men beside her. Then to Nicol her tone was only a shade less commanding. "Let that quirt touch me, and I won't answer for the consequences. Guess you've no right to thrash my boy, and I'm right here to see you quit. Think it over," she added, and, with her last word, there was a movement of her rifle which added to its aggression.

Just for a moment it looked as though a clash was inevitable. Just for a moment it seemed as if the man's half-drunken madness was about to drive him to extremes. But the girl's cool nerve, or more probably, perhaps, the presence of her rifle, seemed to have a sobering effect. There was the snick of Little One Man's razor-like knife as he released his bound comrade from the flogging post, then Nicol, with a filthy oath, flung his quirt on the ground, and, turning, thrust his way through the crowd, and strode back to the fort.

Five minutes later Keeko was down at the landing. She was standing looking on while her Indians cast off the moorings of the canoes. She was shaking from head to foot. But not a sign of her weakness was permitted in the sharp, clear orders she flung at her crew.

CHAPTER V

A DUEL

"What's amiss with Keeko?"

The sick woman opened a pair of startled eyes. She half turned her face towards the darkened doorway.

Nicol was standing there. He had entered the room at that moment, but with a quiet unusual to him. She gazed at him without reply. Perhaps the activity of her brain was dulling. Perhaps she was searching the face, the sight of which she had learned in years to hate and fear.

It was a handsome face still, for all the man was approaching fifty. It was fleshy, and its dark beard did not improve it. But the eyes were keen and fine for all there was coldness and cruelty in their hard depths. The abundant moustache was without a tinge of grey in it, but it lacked trimness, and hung over a cruel mouth like a tattered curtain.

The woman knew the value of these good looks, however. They served to mask a mind and heart that knew no scruple. So it was that her reply finally came in a quick apprehensive question.

"What d'you mean?" she gasped, in her spasmodic way. "What's she done?"

Nicol laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. He moved across to the bed and sprawled himself upon its foot, while his eyes searched the emaciated face as though some secret speculation was going on in his mind while he talked of other things.

"She held me up with a gun," he said slowly. "That's all. She held me up! Me! And she did it with a nerve I had to reckon was pretty fine.

There were twenty or more of the darn Shaunekuks around. Guess I was mad at the time. But I had to laff after."

The unmoving eyes of the woman on the bed were reading him. No mood of his could deceive her. She had learned her lesson bitterly in something like seventeen years. The man was acting now. He was laughing over an incident which filled him with a consuming rage.

"You came here to tell me about it." The voice was faint with bodily weakness, but there was no weariness in the anxious watchfulness of her eyes. "Guess you'd best tell it. It's not your way to waste time in this room with anything pleasant to hand out. It's easier for me to listen, and nothing you can say can do me much hurt."

The man laughed again. It was a laugh that was cut off abruptly.

"I don't need to look for sympathy where you are," he said. "Anyway I don't guess I need any."

"No."

The antagonism of the monosyllable was unmistakable.

Nicol shrugged.

"That swine, Snake Foot," he said. "He refused to do as I told him. He guessed Keeko needed him at the landing, and he hadn't time for me. So I took him to the flogging post."

It was said coldly. Quite without emotion.

"And you flogged him with your--quirt?"

"Sure."

The man's teeth clipped together.

"Oh, yes," he went on, after a moment. "I'm not the sort to let a neche get away with that sort of thing. You see, I reckon I'm master around this layout."

"And Keeko?"

Again came the man's ominous laugh in reply.

"She was quick. I reckoned she was here with you. Making her fancy farewell. But she was around before I'd hardly begun. Oh, yes. She acted her show piece, and if you'd seen it I guess she'd have got your applause good. It was against me. She jumped in front of that red-skinned swine so my quirt nearly came down on her. But it didn't.

And I'm glad. Guess she's too soft, and pretty, and dandy to hurt--yet.

A feller doesn't feel that way with women later, when they show him the h.e.l.l they've always got waiting on any fool man. She's got grit. Sure she has. It's good for a girl to have grit, and I'd say she's got it--plenty. But she put up a gun at me. And I reckon she meant to use it if need be. It's that that's the matter. That's been put into her darn fool head. That's not Keeko."

The man's manner had changed abruptly. His heavy brows depressed, and, to the listener, it was as though she could hear his teeth grit over each word he spoke. But even so she could not restrain her pa.s.sionate joy at the defeat the man's words admitted.

"She beat you?" she said, a great light flooding her big eyes. "She beat you," she repeated, "and made you quit. She took your measure for the coward who could flog a wretched neche who couldn't defend himself. I'm glad."

For a moment the sting of the woman's words looked like overwhelming the man's restraint. But the black shadow of his brows suddenly lightened, and again he shrugged his heavy shoulders with a transparent indifference.

"Oh, yes," he admitted. "She beat me." Then he added slowly, and with an appearance of deep reflection: "But then she's young. How old?

Nineteen?" He nodded. "Nineteen, and as pretty as a picture. Prettier by a heap than her mother ever was." His lips parted with a noise that expressed appreciation and appet.i.te. "Say, did you ever see such a figure? She kind of makes you think of a yearling deer, or the picture of one of those swell girls Diana always has chasing around her. And she don't know a thing but what this country's taught her--which I guess isn't a lot. But she can learn. Oh, yes. She can learn." Then with deliberate, cold emphasis: "And one of the things she'll learn is that she can't hold me up with a gun without paying for it."

The mother's eyes widened with fear, with loathing.

"What do you mean?" she cried, with a force which must have alarmed anyone who understood or cared for her bodily condition. "Pay? How can you make her pay? Oh, you don't know Keeko. You don't know what you're up against. Keeko would shoot you like a dog if you dared----"