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He fell back, and his hands flew to the knot behind his head. He tore off the gag and threw it overboard. Bela looked at him for the fraction of a second. "Well, what's your game?" he bitterly demanded. "It's pretty near ended for both of us. I hope you're satisfied. You savage!" Bela's eyes did not swerve again from that point ahead.
And after that another and yet another. Would it not be an awful pity to waste Erös Béla's money, even though he was not here to enjoy its fruits? So dancing was kept up till close on eight o'clock in the morning till the sun was high up in the heavens and the bell of the village church tolled for early Mass.
Bela's cache was on the opposite side of the creek from the men's cabin. The only place where Sam could cross without getting another wetting was by the stepping-stones near the lake. He headed for the pines where the going was better and encircled the edge of the meadow. A great turmoil was going on within him. He was aghast at the gust of passion that had drowned all his senses for a moment.
And there was such an atmosphere of merriment and of animation about the place that instinctively Béla's thoughts flew back to the dismal and dingy little tap-room whence he had just come, with a few drunken fellows sprawling in corners and Leopold Hirsch's ugly face leering out of the shadows. Here everyone was gay and good-tempered.
Nor would he have cared to have it said that he had married a Jewess. There is always a certain thought of disgrace attached to such a marriage, whether it has been contracted by peer or peasant, and Erös Béla's one dominating idea in life was to keep the respect and deference of his native village.
Shuffling inside the teepee, he presently reappeared with a little bundle wrapped in folds of dressed moose hide. Sitting calm he undid it deliberately. A pearl-handled revolver was revealed to Bela's eager eyes. "The white man's short gun," he said. "Your fat'er gave it long tam ago. I keep her ver' careful. Still shoot straight. Here are shells, too. Tak' it, and keep her clean.
Bela's boarders were not a very perspicacious lot, but when she came in again to serve the dinner the dullest among them became aware of the change in her. The lace collar and the rose in her belt were significant enough, but there was more than that. Before she had been merely the efficient hostess, friendly to all but sexless.
"Say, we'll pay double if you let us look at you while we eat. You'll save money, too; we won't eat so much. We'll take you for dessert!" The other men were uneasy. If this was Joe's and Bela's way of making love they wished they would do it in private. They were slow-thinking men, accustomed to taking things at face value.
It was a lovely room, for Béla's house was larger by far than his sister's, the rooms were wider and more lofty, and the windows had large, clear panes of glass in them.
Since Sam was the only white man who did not patronize the place, he had to submit to be held up on the road half a dozen times a day while they forced him to listen to the details of the last wonderful meal at Bela's. "No bannock and sow-belly; no, sir! Real raised outside bread and genuine cow-butter from the mission. Green stuff from the mission garden.
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