The Courage of Marge O'Doone, James Oliver Curwood [smart books to read .txt] 📗

unsteadily, swaying slightly like the slender stem of a flower stirred by a breath of air, and that he had not noticed these things because of the steadiness and clearness of her wonderful eyes. He was at her side in an instant. He forgot the bear. His hand seized hers--the one with the deep, red scratch on it--and drew her to a flat rock a few steps away. She followed him, keeping her eyes on him in a wondering sort of way. The grizzly's reddish eyes were on David. A few yards away Baree was lying flat on his belly between two stones, his eyes on the bear. It was a strange scene and rather weirdly incongruous. David no longer sensed it. He still held the girl's hand as he seated her on the rock, and he looked into her eyes, smiling confidently. She was, after all, his little chum--the Girl who had been with him ever since that first night's vision in Thoreau's cabin, and who had helped him to win that great fight he had made; the girl who had cheered and inspired him during many months, and whom he had come fifteen hundred miles to see. He told her this. At first she possibly thought him a little mad. Her eyes betrayed that suspicion, for she uttered not a word to break in on his story; but after a little her lips parted, her breath came a little more quickly, a flush grew in her cheeks. It was a wonderful thing in her life, this story, no matter if the man was a bit mad, or even an impostor. He at least was very real in this moment, and he had told the story without excitement, and with an immeasurable degree of confidence and quiet tenderness--as though he had been simplifying the strange tale for the ears of a child, which in fact he had been endeavouring to do; for with the flush in her cheeks, her parted lips, and her softening eyes, she looked to him more like a child now than ever. His manner gave her great faith. But of course she was, deep in her trembling soul, quite incredulous that he should have done all these things for _her_--incredulous until he ended his story with that day's travel up the valley, and then, for the first time, showed to her--as a proof of all he had said--the picture.
She gave a little cry then. It was the first sound that had broken past her lips, and she clutched the picture in her hands and stared at it; and David, looking down, could see nothing but that shining disarray of curls, a rich and wonderful brown, in the sunlight, clustering about her shoulders and falling thickly to her waist. He thought it indescribably beautiful, in spite of the manner in which the curls and tresses had tangled themselves. They hid her face as she bent over the picture. He did not speak. He waited, knowing that in a moment or two all that he had guessed at would be clear, and that when the girl looked up she would tell him about the picture, and why she happened to be here, and not with the woman of the coach, who must have been her mother.
When at last she did look up from the picture her eyes were big and staring and filled with a mysterious questioning.
David, feeling quite sure of himself, said:
"How did it happen that you were away up here, and not with your mother that night when I met her on the train?"
"She wasn't my mother," replied the girl, looking at him still in that strange way. "My mother is dead."


CHAPTER XVIII
After that quietly spoken fact that her mother was dead, David waited for Marge O'Doone to make some further explanation. He had so firmly convinced himself that the picture he had carried was the key to all that he wanted to know--first from Tavish, if he had lived, and now from the girl--that it took him a moment or two to understand what he saw in his companion's face. He realized then that his possession of the picture and the manner in which it had come into his keeping were matters of great perplexity to her, and that the woman whom he had met in the Transcontinental held no significance for her at all, although he had told her with rather marked emphasis that this woman--whom he had thought was her mother--had been searching for a man who bore her own name, O'Doone. The girl was plainly expecting him to say something, and he reiterated this fact--that the woman in the coach was very anxious to find a man whose name was O'Doone, and that it was quite reasonable to suppose that _her_ name was O'Doone, especially as she had with her this picture of a girl bearing that name. It seemed to him a powerful and utterly convincing argument. It was a combination of facts difficult to get away from without certain conclusions, but this girl who was so near to him that he could almost feel her breath did not appear fully to comprehend their significance. She was looking at him with wide-open, wondering eyes, and when he had finished she said again:
"My mother is dead. And my father is dead, too. And my aunt is dead--up at the Nest. There isn't any one left but my uncle Hauck, and he is a brute. And Brokaw. He is a bigger brute. It was he who made me let him take this picture--two years ago. I have been training Tara to kill--to kill any one that touches me, when I scream."
It was wonderful to watch her eyes darken, to see her pupils grow big and luminous. She did not look at the picture clutched in her hands, but straight at him.
"He caught me there, near the creek. He _frightened_ me. He _made_ me let him take it. He wanted me to take off my...."
A flood of wild blood rushed into her face. In her heart was a fury.
"I wouldn't be afraid now--not of him alone," she cried. "I would scream--and fight, and Tara would tear him into pieces. Oh, Tara knows how to do it--_now_! I have trained him."
"He compelled you to let him take the picture," urged David gently. "And then...."
"I saw one of the pictures afterward. My aunt had it. I wanted to destroy it, because I hated it, and I hated him. But she said it was necessary for her to keep it. She was sick then. I loved her. She would put her arms around me every day. She used to kiss me, nights, when I went to bed. But we were afraid of Hauck--I don't call him 'uncle.' _She_ was afraid of him. Once I jumped at him and scratched his face when he swore at her, and he pulled my hair. _Ugh_, I can feel it now! After that she used to cry, and she always put her arms around me closer than ever. She died that way, holding my head down to her, and trying to say something. But I couldn't understand. I was crying. That was six months ago. Since then I've been training Tara--to kill."
"And why have you trained Tara, little girl?"
David took her hand. It lay warm and unresisting in his, a firm, very little hand. He could feel a slight shudder pass through her.
"I heard--something," she said. "The Nest is a terrible place. Hauck is terrible. Brokaw is terrible. And Hauck sent away somewhere up there"--she pointed northward--"for Brokaw. He said--I belonged to Brokaw. What did he mean?"
She turned so that she could look straight into David's eyes. She was hard to answer. If she had been a woman....
She saw the slow, gathering tenseness in David's face as he looked for a moment away from her bewildering eyes--the hardening muscles of his jaws; and her own hand tightened as it lay in his.
"What did Hauck mean?" she persisted. "Why do I belong to Brokaw--that great, red brute?"
The hand he had been holding he took between both his palms in a gentle, comforting way. His voice was gentle, too, but the hard lines did not leave his face.
"How old are you, Marge?" he asked.
"Seventeen," she said.
"And I am--thirty-eight." He turned to smile at her. "See...." He raised a hand and took off his hat. "My hair is getting gray!"
She looked up swiftly, and then, so suddenly that it took his breath away, her fingers were running back through his thick blond hair.
"A little," she said. "But you are not old."
She dropped her hand. Her whole movement had been innocent as a child's.
"And yet I am _quite_ old," he assured her. "Is this man Brokaw at the Nest, Marge?"
She nodded.
"He has been there a month. He came after Hauck sent for him, and went away again. Then he came back."
"And you are now running away from him?"
"From all of them," she said. "If it were just Brokaw I wouldn't be afraid. I would let him catch me, and scream. Tara would kill him for me. But it's Hauck, too. And the others. They are worse since Nisikoos died. That is what I called her--Nisikoos--my aunt. They are all terrible, and they all frighten me, especially since they began to build a great cage for Tara. Why should they build a cage for Tara, out of small trees? Why do they want to shut him up? None of them will tell me. Hauck says it is for another bear that Brokaw is bringing down from the Yukon. But I know they are lying. It is for Tara." Suddenly her fingers clutched tightly at his hand, and for the first time he saw under her long, shimmering lashes the darkening fire of a real terror. "Why do I belong to Brokaw?" she asked again, a little tremble in her voice. "Why did Hauck say that? Can--can a man--buy a girl?"
The nails of her slender fingers were pricking his flesh. David did not feel their hurt.
"What do you mean?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "Did that man--Hauck--sell you?"
He looked away from her as he asked the question. He was afraid, just then, that something was in his face which he did not want her to see. He began to understand; at least he was beginning to picture a very horrible possibility.
"I--don't--know," he heard her say, close to his shoulder. "It was night before last I heard them quarrelling, and I crept close to a door that was a little open, and looked in. Brokaw had given my uncle a bag of gold, a little sack, like the miners use, and I heard him swear at my uncle, and say: 'That's more than she is worth but I'll give in. _Now_ she's mine!' I don't know why it frightened me so. It wasn't Brokaw. I guess it was the terrible look in that man's face--my uncle's. Tara and I ran away that night. Why do you suppose they want to put Tara in a cage? Do you think Brokaw was buying _Tara_ to put into that cage? He said 'she,' not 'he'."
He looked at her again. Her eyes were not so fearless now.
"Was he buying Tara, or me?" she insisted.
"Why do you have that thought--that he was buying _you_?" David asked. "Has anything--happened?"
A second time a fury of blood leapt into her face and her lashes shadowed a pair of blazing stars.
"He--that red brute--caught me in the dark two weeks ago, and held me there--and kissed me!" She fairly panted at him, springing to her feet and standing before him. "I would have screamed, but it was in the house, and