Chapter XII

Jeff was a rather fluent young man ordinarily, with a nice speech usually ready on his lips, but for a few seconds following his discovery of Molly’s presence on the battlefield he was as silent as if he were born mute. It was not mere inability to think of something suitable to say. There was simply nothing possible to say which would tell how he felt, or the meaning that this moment had for him. The language is old and rich, but there are times when it seems pitifully inadequate.

However, Jeff did some clear and able thinking. One of the first things he thought was that he would never, even in the secret places of his mind, make light of this girl again. She might not be his kind of a girl, the kind that fulfilled his ideal of womanhood, but every spark of manhood made him stand up and admit that her fine courage and steadfastness—hers alone—had saved him from serious injury or death. She had done him a service that even in this Northern land he would probably never have opportunity to repay, and he would always be her acknowledged debtor. In addition to this, there was born in this memorable night a comradeship between them that ought never to pass away, the inevitable result of their common danger and victory.

Strangely enough, the romance of their relationship seemed lessened rather than increased. His romantic nature had been deeply stirred some nights before when this same capable, companionable girl had danced with him in mask and fancy dress; but it was quite lifeless now. It was hard to explain how a midnight adventure that had brought them close together could, in a sense, estrange them; erect a barrier definitely to shut out a more beautiful relationship. Yet this thing was true. He was moved, deeply grateful; but his emotion was something far different than she might be dreaming. He was not particularly good at self-analysis, so perhaps he could not tell why things were as they were; he only was certain that this courageous woman who had plunged into a fight and with a man’s weapon repelled a murderous attack upon him was not and could never be the romantic ideal he had cherished so long. He was a sentimental youth—the child of a strangely sentimental environment—and his heart’s image was something far different from this. In his dreams, he was the knight who saved the helpless and wistful lady, and never was he rescued in a brawl by a young Amazon who knocked men down with clubs!

She simply was not his kind of a girl. Of this fact he was more certain than ever, even in this moment of real and profound gratitude toward her. It might have been easy for a man of logic to show that such a stand was impossible and untenable; but it would not have changed Jeff Sharp. The ideals and sentiments of youth may be foolish and untrue; yet lives are shaped by them just the same.

“I can never thank you,” he told her gravely. “It was the finest thing of the kind I ever saw.”

Both were white-faced in the moonlight. The girl had a startled look; and perhaps also a bewildered, dazed look as if something had turned out far different from her dreams. Her eyes were still lustrous with tears, and now she tried to force back the stinging drops, as if they told her heart-secrets no one must know. Although she tried hard to make herself look away, she kept looking into Jeff’s eyes for what the moon might show her; and why she did not know. Jeff, hating himself, and wholly ill at ease, found relief from the strain of the moment by turning his attentions to the fallen foe.

The Indian had got up by now, after examining the clubbed Russian, and his face as he regarded Molly was comical to see. His stern mouth was rounded, his eyes showed a vast and incredulous admiration.

“Heap big squaw!” he breathed. “Knock’m down—pretty near kill’m. Indian woman, she fight’m—never saw white woman fight’m before. Skookem big, big, strong squaw.”

No wonder both Jeff and the girl looked at him with frank gratitude. He had saved the situation which had passed almost beyond them. Their laughter was a safe mask behind which they could hide their hearts.

“I agree with you perfectly,” Jeff laughed. He sobered instantly. “Now, Chief, tell us what this means. Had we better try to bind these three men? They will be coming to, in a minute. One of ’em is stirring now.”

Coming originally from the Stikine country, the Chief had many times held parleys with the factors of Hudson’s Bay and understood a few words of English, but Jeff’s remark was all too complex for him to follow. Grunting, he indicated inability to understand.

“Tie ’em up?” the white man simplified. At the same time, he brought his hands about his ankles in a suggestive gesture.

“No, tie ’em up. Skin out quick. Company catch me, catch you, catch big strong woman.”

Jeff experienced a queer, dim quickening in his memory. There was something oddly familiar about all this. He stared into the native’s face.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Name?—Him Big Eagle.”

Big Eagle! Jeff remembered, now, his first morning in Sitka and a conversation he had had with a grizzled workman in the fur warehouse. Jeff had not believed the man’s story then; but he could not very well doubt it now. The argument on the hillside had been all too convincing. The man had said that something of a disagreeable nature would happen to Big Eagle; and so it had: he had been neatly waylaid as he walked home from the potlatch, and just what was to have been done to him was at present locked in the minds of the three Russians who slept peacefully among the spruce needles. Perhaps he was to have been killed and his body put away, thus making it certain he would make no more appeals to the Czar; and perhaps the idea had been to take him alive, put him on a westward-bound ship and hear no more of him. In either case Big Eagle would be satisfactorily silenced. Probably the soldiers’ instructions had been to do the latter if possible, and if not, the former; certainly it did not make a great deal of difference either way.

It was an efficient system that Baron Karl operated in the provinces of the Czar.

Jeff was for a moment absorbed in his thoughts; but he emerged swiftly when he heard Molly in conversation with the native. The girl was speaking a language that the Rebel did not know, a queer, guttural tongue, full of harsh consonants. He had the cultural advantages that usually make a linguist, yet obviously she had considerable knowledge of languages other than her own. This was the second time she had surprised him in this way. He had not forgotten her fluent French, heard the night of the Governor’s ball. There was but one reasonable explanation: she was probably quick at language—as she was at everything else—and traveling about the world with her uncle she had picked up an understandable smattering of many tongues directly from the people who used them.

It was perfectly evident that Big Eagle understood her every word. He was looking into the girl’s face with every sign of intense interest and nodding vigorously as he answered her questions. His admiration of her was more obvious than ever; and Jeff was reminded of a dog with his master.

Presently she turned to Jeff. “Big Eagle tells me it was a conspiracy against him on the part of some men in the Company,” she explained. “He is going to vanish at once in the interior—up to his old hunting grounds on the Upper Stikine—because he says it is his one chance for life. He says that you and I had better get back to the ship as soon as possible.”

“I suppose it means trouble for us, too. These men are certain to recognize us.”

“But they are not certain to tell!” Molly informed him. “It isn’t human nature for three men, selected on account of their strength and prowess, to enjoy confessing a defeat at the hands of two men and a girl, particularly when they had all the advantage of ambush. They’ll make up some sort of a story about how Big Eagle’s Indian friends came to his rescue—and although they knocked out a score or so, in the end had to retire before superior numbers. Jeff, I don’t think we’d better wait any longer. Good luck, Big Eagle!”

“Heap seals, great white mother!” the native returned. And as they looked at him, he seemed to vanish into the empty air. The forest he had known and loved so long instantly hid all sight and sound of him, and where he stood was only moonlight and the long shadows of the trees.