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Updated: May 10, 2025
"Why?" "Say, brother," said Nick, with a biting distinctness, "quit right there. Ther' ain't no need fer another word." For a moment Ralph peered into the other's face; but he remained silent. Then he turned over upon his pillow with a sound very like a muttered curse. And from that moment the gulf between them became impassable. Aim-sa was a subject henceforth tabooed from their conversation.
And Aim-sa looked on with eyes which smiled inscrutably; with silent tongue, and brain ever busy. In due course she showed signs of beginning to understand her comrades' language.
And they stood thus for long, until the man calmed and spoke with more practical meaning. "An' we go together?" he asked. Aim-sa nodded. "Now?" The woman shook her head. "No sunrise. I wait here." Again they stood; he clasping her unresisting form, while the touch of her flowing hair intoxicated him, and the gentle rise and fall of her bosom drove all thought wild within him.
Here there was no mistake; some one was standing in the opening, and that some one could only be Aim-sa. He was filled with excitement and his heart beat tumultuously; a frenzy of delight seized upon him, and he stepped forward swiftly. A moment later he stood confronting her. Just for one moment Aim-sa's face took on a look of dismay, but it passed before Ralph had time to read it.
He was ready, and the passion in him was more than willing. Once, before he closed with his opponent, he glanced round at Aim-sa. It may have been that he sought one look of encouragement, one smile; it may have been. But the beautiful face he looked upon had no smile for either. It was dead white under its tanning, and the blue eyes were widely staring.
Ralph stood irresolute. Suddenly Aim-sa started. Her whole bearing changed. A swift, startled gaze shot from beneath her long, curling lashes in the direction of the distant hills. A tiny glimmer of light had caught her attention and she stepped back on the instant and passed into the hut, closing the door softly but quickly behind her. And when she had disappeared Ralph stood as one dazed.
But, however, the time wore on, and the long night closed down without anything happening to precipitate matters. The evening was passed in the woman's company. Ralph sat silent, brooding. While Nick, with the memory of the wild moments during which he had held Aim-sa in his embrace fresh upon him, held a laboured conversation with her.
The door closed softly, and as it closed Aim-sa rose from her blankets. Her expression had changed, and while the men went to their humble couches she moved about with feverish haste, attentive to the least sound, but always hurried, and with a look of deep anxiety in her alert eyes. No word was spoken as the men rolled into their blankets. The thick wall shut out all sound from within the hut.
Inside the hut he released himself from the icy embrace of the dead man's arms, and laid the poor, cold clay upon the blankets which had been spread for the return of Aim-sa. While he stood brooding over the corpse a sound reached him from, behind. Turning he saw that he had left the door open, and in the opening he beheld the crowding forms of his dogs.
The deep fire of hatred was now blazing furiously, and each moment it gathered destructive force. All that was good in the man was slowly devoured, and only a shell of fierce anger remained. But what Nick failed to observe Aim-sa saw as plainly as only a woman can see such things.
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