_ CHAPTER XXIII. ISSUE JOINED
Later in the evening, Mandy McGovern having left me, perhaps for the purpose of assisting her protegee in the somewhat difficult art of drying buckskin clothing, I was again alone on the river bank, idly watching the men out on the bars, struggling with their teams and box boats. Orme had crossed the river some time earlier, and now he joined me at the edge of our disordered camp.
"How is the patient getting along?" he inquired. I replied, somewhat surlily, I fear, that I was doing very well, and thenceforth intended to ride horseback and to comport myself as though nothing had happened.
"I am somewhat sorry to hear that," said he, still smiling in his own way. "I was in hopes that you would be disposed to turn back down the river, if Belknap would spare you an escort east."
I looked at him in surprise. "I don't in the least understand why I should be going east, when my business lies in precisely the opposite direction," I remarked, coolly.
"Very well, then, I will make myself plain," he went on, seating himself beside me. "Granted that you will get well directly--which is very likely, for the equal of this Plains air for surgery does not exist in the world--I may perhaps point out to you that at least your injury might serve as an explanation--as an excuse--you might put it that way--for your going back home. I thought perhaps that your duty lay there as well."
"You become somewhat interested in my affairs, Mr. Orme?"
"Very much so, if you force me to say it."
"I think they need trouble you no farther."
"I thought that possibly you might be sensible of a certain obligation to me," he began.
"I am deeply sensible of it. Are you pleased to tell me what will settle this debt between us?"
He turned squarely toward me and looked me keenly in the eye. "I have told you. Turn about and go home. That is all."
"I do not understand you."
"But I understand your position perfectly."
"Meaning?"
"That your affections are engaged with a highly respectable young lady back at your home in Virginia. Wait--" he raised his hand as I turned toward him. "Meaning also," he went on, "that your affections are apparently also somewhat engaged with an equally respectable young lady who is not back home in Virginia. Therefore--"
He caught my wrist in a grip of steel as I would have struck him. I saw then that I still was weak.
"Wait," he said, smiling coldly. "Wait till you are stronger."
"You are right," I said, "but we shall settle these matters."
"That, of course. But in the meantime, I have only suggested to you that could you agree with me in my point of view our obligation as it stands would be settled."
"Orme," said I, suddenly, "your love is a disgrace to any woman."
"Usually," he admitted, calmly, "but not in this case. I propose to marry Miss Meriwether; and I tell you frankly, I do not propose to have anything stand in my way."
"Then, by God!" I cried, "take her. Why barter and dicker over any woman with another man? The field is open. Do what you can. I know that is the way I'd do."
"Oh, certainly; but one needs all his chances even in an open field, in a matter so doubtful as this. I thought that I would place it before you--knowing your situation back in Virginia--and ask you--"
"Orme," said I, "one question--Why did you not kill me the other day when you could? Your tracks would have been covered. As it is, I may later have to uncover some tracks for you."
"I preferred it the other way," he remarked, still smiling his inscrutable smile.
"You surely had no scruples about it."
"Not in the least. I'd as soon have killed you as to have taken a drink of water. But I simply love to play any kind of game that tests me, tries me, puts me to my utmost mettle. I played that game in my own way."
"I was never very subtle," I said to him simply.
"No, on the contrary, you are rather dull. I dared not kill you--it would have been a mistake in the game. It would have cost me her sympathy at once. Since I did not, and since, therefore, you owe me something for that fact, what do you say about it yourself, my friend?"
I thought for a long time, my head between my hands, before I answered him. "That I shall pay you some day Orme, but not in any such way as you suggest."
"Then it is to be war?" he asked, quietly.
I shrugged my shoulders. "You heard me."
"Very well!" he replied, calmly, after a while. "But listen. I don't forget. If I do not have my pay voluntarily in the way I ask, I shall some day collect it in my own fashion."
"As you like. But we Cowles men borrow no fears very far in advance."
Orme rose and stood beside me, his slender figure resembling less that of a man than of some fierce creature, animated by some uncanny spirit, whose motives did not parallel those of human beings. "Then, Mr. Cowles, you do not care to go back down the valley, and to return to the girl in Virginia?"
"You are a coward to make any such request."
His long white teeth showed as he answered. "Very well," he said. "It is the game. Let the best man win. Shall it then be war?"
"Let the best man win," I answered. "It is war."
We both smiled, each into the other's face. _