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Updated: June 11, 2025
He remembered Mabyn's was a single-shot weapon; and he counted on the time it would take the Indian woman to obtain ammunition, and reload. Quickly and tenderly laying Natalie on the ground under shelter of a stump, he unslung his own rifle.
Fear grew apace with wonder in Mabyn's eyes; his breath quickened; he ceaselessly passed his hand in front of his face. "Natalie!" he muttered, still in the toneless voice of one who sleeps. "Oh, my God! It's Natalie!" Grasping the edge of the bench, he pulled himself to his feet; and took a few uncertain steps toward her. He put out his hand fearfully. Natalie sharply reined back her horse.
They were now on the high uplands by the coast, driving between the beautiful banks, which were starred with primroses and stitchwort and red dead-nettle and a dozen other bright and tender-hued firstlings of the year. The sun was warm on the hedges and the fields, but a cool breeze blew about these lofty heights, and stirred Mabyn's splendid masses of hair as they drove rapidly along.
Will you take the reins while I walk up the hill?" Mabyn's little burst of passion still burned in her cheeks and gave a proud and angry look to her mouth, but she took the reins all the same, and her companion leapt to the ground. The banks on each side of the road going up this hill were tall and steep: here and there great masses of wild flowers were scattered among the grass and the gorse.
The most the fellows would say was, if I didn't bring you back in a week, the bunch would ride up here. "I was so excited with it all, I lost myself like a bloody fool for two days on the prairie; and I just ran on the lake, by accident, yesterday afternoon. Say, I almost gave the whole snap away, for I came over the hill right above Mabyn's shack. Maybe I didn't duck in a hurry!
The man could not keep an ugly little gleam from showing in his shifty gray eye; and Garth stopped abruptly. Mabyn sneered. Garth, fired by one of the imperious impulses of the blood of youth, strode forward and grasped the extended hand defiantly. He saw instantly his mistake. Mabyn's face was suddenly transfigured by the deadly hatred he had long repressed.
Mabyn, miscalculating, or losing his head, suddenly scurried for the next rock. Garth had marked it. Mabyn gained it, but before he could pull his legs after him the rifle spoke. There was a scream of pain; and Mabyn's body, sliding from behind the rock, rolled and dropped heavily from stone to stone.
What happened to the woman at Mabyn's hands was a matter of indifference to him now. Natalie's left arm hung useless; and a soaking crimson stain spread broadly on her sleeve between elbow and shoulder. Her face had gone chalky white, her eyes were half closed, and her teeth were set painfully in her blue nether lip.
Such was the energy of their pace that they reached the last waterhole before coming to Clearwater Lake early next afternoon. Here Garth decided to camp; for he had determined with Natalie to time their arrival at Mabyn's hut for the morning; so that after the briefest stay, they could immediately start back.
He had no time to ridicule or even to think of Mabyn's school-girl affectation of secresy: he had at once rushed off to the place of appointment, and that by a short cut of which she had no knowledge. "Mabyn, what's the matter? Is Wenna ill?" he said, forgetting in his anxiety even to shake hands with her. "Oh no, she isn't," said Mabyn rather coldly and defiantly.
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