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"Well, I don't know, but I believe it's a good thing that Wanaha loves me loves us all. She has such an influence over people." Seth looked up at last. The serious tone of the girl was unusual. But as he said nothing, and simply went on with his work, Rosebud continued. "Sometimes I can't understand you, Seth. I know, generally speaking, you have no cause to like Indians, while perhaps I have.
"It doesn't matter." "I only meant I've got to go across directly after dinner. I could accompany you. No one will interfere with you while I am there." Nevil turned to his food with apparent indifference. Wanaha stood patiently by. Rosebud was tempted. She wanted to see the Reservation again with that strange longing which all people of impulse have for revisiting the scenes of old associations.
It was part of her way to spare Rosebud as much as she could, and the excuse served her now. While Rosebud was receiving a visit from Wanaha at the back of the house, the men-folk, engaged in off-loading pine logs from a wagon, were receiving visitors at the front of it. The Indian Agent and Mr. Hargreaves had driven up in a buckboard.
Then Little Black Fox signed to Wanaha for a light. The squaw took the oil-lamp from a shelf and lit it, and the dull, yellow rays revealed the disorder of the place. The chief gazed about him. His handsome face was unmoved. Finally he looked into the face of the terror-stricken renegade. Nevil was tall, but he was dwarfed by the magnificent carriage and superb figure of the savage.
Therefore she was in nowise surprised when, a few minutes later, she heard a bright, girlish voice hailing her from without. "Wana, Wana!" The tone was delightfully imperious. "Why don't you have some place to tie a horse to?" It was Rosebud. Wanaha had expected her, for it was the anniversary of her coming to White River Farm, and the day Ma Sampson had allotted for her birthday.
For once in her life Wanaha had exercised her own judgment in defiance of her husband's. The squaw passed down the deep prairie furrow while Seth held to the trail. And the man's thoughts went back to the interview he had had with Rosebud that morning. So it was Wanaha who had caused her to come to him.
There was no smile on his face while he stood thinking, only a pucker between his dark brows, and an odd biting of his under-lip. At last he shook himself as though he found the shade chilly, and, a moment later, sauntered round to the front of the building in time to meet the others coming out. He joined the group which included Wanaha, and they talked a few minutes with the Agent and Mr.
Joy at returning to the farm and at finding Seth on the highroad to recovery; and sorrow who shall attempt to probe the depths of this maiden's heart? The day following Rosebud's return was a momentous one. True to her impulsive character the girl, unknown to anybody, saddled her own mare and rode off on a visit to Wanaha. Seth was away from the farm, or he would probably have stopped her.
This expansiveness was so unusual in the man of the plains that Nevil understood at once he had come purposely to speak of Rosebud. He wondered why. This was the first he had heard of Rosebud's good fortune, and he wished to know more. The matter had been kept from everybody. Even Wanaha had been kept in ignorance of it.
But Seth was not quite free to go his way. Another interruption occurred about half a mile from the farm, where the trail dipped so that he was completely hidden from view. He overtook Wanaha. The Indian had been walking steadily on, but, since the sound of his horse's hoofs reached her, she had been waiting at the roadside.
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