The Fur Bringers Part 37

"How is your father?" asked Strange quietly.

She shrugged helplessly. "Still weak," she said, "but there has been no return of fever. I have managed to keep the truth from him, but he suspects if. I cannot keep him in his room much longer."

"Ah! It makes me mad when I think of him!" Strange muttered.

There was a silence between them. His sympathy was sweet to her. She allowed it to lull her instinct of danger.

"What about the Kakisas?" she asked. "I gathered from Macfarlane's and Dr. Giddings's careful attempts to rea.s.sure me, that they feared danger from that source."

Strange smiled enigmatically.

"Surely the idea of an Indian attack is absurd," said Colina. "There hasn't been such a thing for thirty years."

"I know the Indians better than any man here," said Strange. "One may expect danger without being afraid."

"Danger!" cried Colina, elevating her eyebrows. "They would never dare!--"

"Not of themselves--but with a leader!"

"Ambrose Doane?" said Colina quickly. Her intelligence instantly rejected the suggestion, but self-love s.n.a.t.c.hed at it in justification.

Wounded vanity makes incongruous alliances. "That would be devilis.h.!.+"

she murmured.

Strange shrugged. "I can't be sure of what is going on," he said. "I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily. But I have a reason to suspect danger."

Colina turned pale. "Tell me exactly what you mean," she said.

"The Indians have learned by now how easy it was to seize the mill," he said with admirable gravity. "It seems to me that to the Indian mind looting the store will next suggest itself. We know they are incensed against your father. His long weakness makes them bold."

"But these are merely surmises!"' cried Colina.

"There is something else. Their minds work obliquely. They never come out straight with anything. I have received a kind of warning. It was an invitation to spend the night with Marcel Charlbois down the river.

But it came from the other side."

"Why should they warn you?" asked Colina.

"Some man among them probably has compunctions," said Strange.

"Watusk, the head man is a decent sort. Perhaps this is his way of letting me know that he cannot keep his people in hand."

"What do you expect will happen?" she asked.

"I think there will be an attack to-night," he said quietly. "It is my duty to tell you. If it doesn't come, no harm done."

Strange's quiet air was terribly impressive. Colina sat pale and silent, letting the horror sink in. She was no weakling, but this was a prospect to appal the strongest man.

"We are so helpless!" she murmured at last.

A spark, one would have said of satisfaction, shot from beneath Strange's demurely lowered eyelids. "We cannot depend on our breeds,"

he went on soberly, "and Greer has gone over to the other side."

Colina winced.

"That leaves us four men and yourself and your father. If we had a stone building we could snap our fingers at them but everything is of wood. And fire is their favorite weapon. There are two courses open to us. We can go before they come, or we can stay and defend ourselves."

Colina stared before her, wide-eyed. "Father would never let us take him away without an explanation," she murmured. "And if we told him what we feared, he would flatly refuse to go--"

Strange maintained a discreet silence.

Colina suddenly flung up her head. "We stay here!" she cried.

Strange's dark eyes burned--but with what kind of a feeling Colina was in no state to judge. "You're brave!" he cried. "That's what I wanted you to say!"

"What must we do to prepare?"

"There is little we can do. We must abandon the store. There is no way to defend it. Perhaps they will be satisfied with looting it. We will all take up our station in the house. At the worst, I do not fear any harm to any of us, except perhaps--"

"Father?" murmured Colina.

"They have been wrought up to a high pitch against him," Strange said deprecatingly.

"Oh, why did that man have to come here!" murmured Colina.

They were silent for a while, Colina looking on the ground, and Strange watching Colina with his peculiar limpid, candid eyes, which, when one looked deep enough, were not candid at all.

He finally looked away from her.

"There is something I want to say," he began an low tones. "Your father--he shall be my special care to-night. They can strike at him--only through me."

"Ah, you're so good to me!" murmured Colina.

"Do not thank me," he said quickly. "Remember I owe him everything.

All I am. All I have I would gladly--gladly--I sound melodramatic, don't I. But I don't often inflict this on you. You know what I mean.

If I could save him!"

Colina impulsively seized his hand. Tears of grat.i.tude sprang to her eyes. "I will thank you!" she cried. "You're the best friend I have in the world!"

"And even if I owed him nothing," Strange went on, not looking at her, "he would still be your father!"

An hour before Colina would have crushed him. But it came at an emotional moment. She was blind to his color then.

"I will never, never forget this," she said.

He respectfully lifted her hands to his lips.

The under devil whose especial business it is to preside over fine acting must have rubbed his hands gleefully at the sight of his dark-skinned protege's apt.i.tude.