Roy Norton

“ I have held the heads of women disemboweled by Turkish swords; bandaged the feet of human beings whose naked soles had been shod with horseshoes by Turkish officers; heard the dying whispers of mangled Russian peasants who had suffered ruthless steel! ”

“ I checked her. “It's sufficient that after the strange superstition in which your name was held, the hints of mystery and of fear and the warnings to avoid you and yours uttered by a well-meaning Indian some hundreds of miles from here, the manner of your reception was anything but encouraging. It was a confirmation of mystery and of doubt. For hundreds of miles around your village the natives dread you and yours, speak of you in whispers, or—speak not at all! ”
“Incredible! Impossible!” she exclaimed.
“Malitka—Malitka—it's so.” Jack's soothing voice interjected. ”

“ Necessity breaks all barriers. Wait here a minute.”
She was gone but a few minutes in which time I gravely inspected the shaman. He seemed to have passed from the unconsciousness of wounds to the response of quiet sleep. His breathing had become regular and deep.
“For you,” said Malitka to me when she returned, “I can provide garments that will more or less fit. But for you”—addressing Jack—“it's more difficult. I have sent to Peluk's house for a change of underwear and his spare clothing, because he is nearer your stature, although perhaps somewhat larger. He is a big man. ”

“ I can no more weigh the situation than can you; but this I tell you—because I know these natives better than you—is not the finish. Those men back up there in the gold camp will not be content to let matters rest. They will cry for blood. The savage instinct in them will overcome all they have been taught. If you think they will submit easily, you are mistaken. These are fighting men. We have much to face, myself as well as you. And Peluk sleeps. ”

“ His enormous vitality should do the rest. He will live.”
She had skillfully and deftly bandaged him and turned away before she asked a question.
“Where did this happen?”
“Up on the trail from the mining camp,” I answered.
She whirled and eyed me.
“What do you know about the mining camp?” she demanded.
Jack spared me the embarrassment of answering by moving toward her and saying, “The shaman took us there. There is no occasion for anger, Malitka. He took us there to save our lives, and there he fought for us, and from there he brought us, fighting on the way here.” ”

“ We carried the shaman into the room she had indicated, laid him upon the bed and stripped him of his clothing. Not until then had I fully appreciated his splendid physique, his great muscular development, the full size of his torso. And not until then did Jack or I know that he had admitted only the most serious wound, the one we had so crudely bandaged, for he had refrained from mentioning that three other bullets had found marks. Those others that he had disdained to mention lest we lose time in bandaging them, had done the most damage. ”

“ One who I am certain has neither fear nor could be restrained by the thought that your words might hurt the feelings of either man or woman. You are not a parlor puppet who invents graceful speeches. You are one who deals in hard truths. So I ask you, what is the meaning of all this mystery? ”

“ I walked to the door, flung it open, and slipped to the adjoining room. The door was ajar. Malitka was there, half kneeling above the shaman and listening intently to his breathing. She heard me enter, turned, arose, laid a finger upon her lips to impress silence and gestured me to withdraw. She was all woman in that moment. Yes, in that moment she was exquisitely and beautifully human.
With an exaggerated caution we passed through the door before she whispered, “He sleeps well. He will recover soon. ”

“ Both women and men have, through all time, battled for an ideal; both have gathered and fought as tribes, as countries, as nations; but the sternest fight ever waged is, after all, that of man for woman, or woman for man. ”

“ And then I recalled other things, tried to correlate, but reasoned that at any rate, whether the man concerning whose existence or death it was my duty to learn were dead or alive, the garments must minister to my needs, and slipped into the coat. ”