The Huntress Part 69

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "The horses--wolves?"

"No, everything is all right," said Sam.

"What's the matter, then?"

"Would you mind staying awake a little?" begged Sam. "I--I can't sleep. Got the horrors, I guess."

"Sure thing!" said Ed. He took "horrors" quite as a matter of course.

He was a comfortable soul. He crept to the door and looked out, gradually yawning himself into complete wakefulness.

"G.o.d! what a night!" he said simply. "The moon is like a lady coming down to bathe!"

"I hate it!" cried Sam shakily. "Close the flaps."

Ed did so, and returned to his blankets. "Let's have a smoke," he suggested cosily.

They lit up. Sam's pipe, however, went out immediately.

"I suppose you think I'm crazy," he said deprecatingly.

"Oh, I've been young myself," replied Ed.

"If you don't mind I want to talk about it," said Sam. "It's driving me crazy!"

"Fire away," a.s.sented Ed. "Is it a woman?"

"Yes," replied Sam. "How did you know?"

Ed smiled to himself.

"She's no good!" went on Sam bitterly. "That's what hurts. She's just a scheming, lying savage! She's only working to get me in her power. I can't trust her. I've got good reason to know that, and yet--oh G.o.d!

she's right in my blood! I can't stop thinking about her a minute.

"Sometimes I think she's a good woman, you know, the real thing, gentle and true! It's my imagination makes me think that. I _know_ she's no good--but it's driving me crazy. I want her so bad, it seems as if I'd die if I didn't go back to her. That's what she wants, to get me under her thumb. I'm a fool! I've got no strength to resist her!"

"Well, now," said Ed comfortably, "you're all excited. Maybe she ain't as bad as all that."

"She is! She is!" cried Sam. "I've got good reason to know it."

"'Tain't the thing itself that drives you crazy," Ed went on philosophically. "It's thinking about it too much. Your brain goes round like a squirrel in his little cage, and you don't know where you are. Now, if you could put the whole business out of your mind a little while, shut a door on it, so to speak, by and by, when you open it again, there's the right answer standing there plain as a pike-staff!"

"Forget it!" cried Sam. "It's with me night and day! If I let go, I'll cave in. I'll go running back! G.o.d help me, if she ever gets hold of me. I'd be the laughing-stock of the whole country! I couldn't look a child in the face! No! No! If you're my friend, keep me from going back! Have you got a Bible?"

"Sure," said Ed. "There in the top of that dunnage bag at your hand.

What do you want it for?"

"I'll settle it," Sam muttered, searching for the book. He found it.

"I'll take an oath on it," he said to Ed. "I want you to hear it.

Because a man can find a way to get out of an oath he swears to himself. Listen!"

A faint effulgence filtering through the canvas revealed him kneeling on his blankets, with the book in his hands.

He said solemnly: "I swear on this holy book and on my honour that I will never go back to this woman. And if I break this oath may all men despise me! So help me G.o.d. Amen!"

"That's a good strong one," remarked Ed cheerfully.

"Yes, a man could hardly break that," murmured Sam, oddly calmed.

"Light up," said Ed.

"No, I think I can sleep now."

Sam did sleep until morning. He arose, not exactly in a jovial mood, nevertheless calm. He might have a dull ache in the bottom of his breast, but the wild struggle was over. The matter was disposed of for good.

After breakfast he and Ed hitched up the team and went to the pine ridge to haul the logs Ed had cut the day before. They had returned with a load, and were throwing them off at the site of the proposed house, when Ed suddenly c.o.c.ked his head to listen.

"Horses," he said, "and wheels."

"Some of the natives," suggested Sam.

Ed shook his head. "No occasion for them to bring a wagon. They come horseback."

Sam scowled; dreading, hoping--what he knew not.

By and by the team and wagon clattered into view from among the trees along the river.

"My horses!" cried Sam involuntarily. Filled with a kind of panic, his eyes sought the hills.

A second glance showed him both the figures visible in the wagon-box were of men. He calmed down. Whether his princ.i.p.al feeling was of relief or disappointment, he could not have said. Ed was looking at him curiously.

"Not mine," said Sam, blushing. "I mean the team I used to drive."

As the horses mounted the rise, Sam called in a softened voice: "Sambo! Dinah!"

The little black pair p.r.i.c.ked up their ears and whinnied. Sam went to meet them. The two men he dimly remembered as breed-boys around the settlement. Scarcely regarding them, he pulled the horses' ears and rubbed their noses, while they nozzled him capriciously with delicate whickerings.

"Old boy! Old girl!" whispered Sam. "You haven't forgotten me, eh?

Maybe you miss me just the same as I miss you!"

"How did you come by this team?" he demanded of the driver.

As he looked up he saw that a third head and shoulders had risen above the edge of the box. He saw a face incredibly wrinkled, framed in long, straggling grey hair. The bright eyes twinkled merrily.

"h.e.l.lo, Sam!"