Later in the evening, Mandy McGovern having left me, perhaps for the purpose of assisting her protégée 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."
"But I understand your position perfectly."
"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.