“Tea-dance!  Bah!  Indian foolishness!” said Simon.

“Let us go anyway,” said Ambrose.  “I feel as if there was something crooked going on.  This Indian will bear watching.”

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SUBTLETY OF GORDON STRANGE.

At the same moment Gordon Strange was sitting on the bench at the foot of the flag-staff, smoking, and gazing speculatively across the river at the teepee village.

Colina issued out of the big house, and seeing him, joined him.  It was her first public appearance since the scene at the mill, and it was something of an ordeal.

Her face showed what she was going through.  She was elaborately self-conscious; defiance struggled with a secret shame.  In her heart she knew she was wrong, yet she thirsted for justification.

“What is the situation?” she asked haughtily.

Strange told her briefly.  His air was admirable.  He betrayed no consciousness of anything changed in her; he was deferential without being obsequious.

He let her understand that she was still his peerless mistress who could do no wrong.  This was exactly what Colina wanted.  She warmed toward him, and sat down.

“Ah!  I can talk straight to you,” she said.  “The others act as if the truth was too strong for me!”

“I know better than that,” said Strange quietly.  “You have the best head of any of us.”

“Except when I lose it!” Colina thought.  She smiled at him more warmly than she knew.  A little flame that leaped up behind the man’s eyes warned her.  “Would he ever dare!” she thought.

“How is your father?” asked Strange quietly.

She shrugged helplessly.  “Still weak,” she said, “but there has been no return of fever.  I have managed to keep the truth from him, but he suspects if.  I cannot keep him in his room much longer.”

“Ah!  It makes me mad when I think of him!” Strange muttered.

There was a silence between them.  His sympathy was sweet to her.  She allowed it to lull her instinct of danger.

“What about the Kakisas?” she asked.  “I gathered from Macfarlane’s and Dr. Giddings’s careful attempts to reassure me, that they feared danger from that source.”

Strange smiled enigmatically.

“Surely the idea of an Indian attack is absurd,” said Colina.  “There hasn’t been such a thing for thirty years.”

“I know the Indians better than any man here,” said Strange.  “One may expect danger without being afraid.”

“Danger!” cried Colina, elevating her eyebrows.  “They would never dare!—­”

“Not of themselves—­but with a leader!”

“Ambrose Doane?” said Colina quickly.  Her intelligence instantly rejected the suggestion, but self-love snatched at it in justification.  Wounded vanity makes incongruous alliances.  “That would be devilish!” she murmured.