His attention was attracted in the other direction by a laugh from Bela. It had anything but a merry sound, but their ears were not sharp enough to detect the lack. Bela's nostrils were dilated, and her lip oddly turned back. But she laughed.
"He is fonny cook!" she said. "I got laugh!"
"Oh, never mind him!" said Big Jack. "He doesn't count! What is your answer?"
Bela stopped laughing. "Well, I got think about it," she said. "I tell you to-morrow."
The situation at Nine-Mile Point was not improved by the wholesale proposal for Bela's hand. The twenty-four hours she required for her answer promised to be hard to get through.
The interim of waiting for a lady to make up her mind is sufficiently trying on a man's nerves under the most favourable circumstances; but to be obliged to endure the company of all his rivals meanwhile was almost too much.
Breakfast was eaten in a dangerous electrical silence. No man dared to speak of what was in every man's mind, and to make trivial conversation was impossible under that atmospheric pressure.
Afterward, when Bela announced her intention of going away for a while, every man, much as he desired her company, felt relieved, and no word was spoken to stay her departure.
They let her go without so much as looking out to see which way she went. As a matter of fact, nobody was willing to let anybody else look; therefore, he could not look himself.
Thereafter they breathed more freely. At least, they were all in the same boat. They were not under the intolerable strain of watching every look of her eyes and interpreting every word she spoke for a sign.
The worst they had to look forward to was one more day of unutterable boredom. Each man was buoyed up by the hope that it might be the last of such days for him.
Sam went about his work with a wooden face and a sore and angry heart. He was not much of a self-analyst. He called Bela all manner of hard names to himself, without stopping to ask why, if she were such a worthless creature, he should feel so concerned about her.
A woman who took her pleasure in provoking four men to the point of murder was not worth bothering about, he told himself a hundred times; but he continued to be very much bothered.