CHAPTER XVIII

After that quietly spoken fact that her mother was dead, David waited for Marge O’Doone to make some further explanation.  He had so firmly convinced himself that the picture he had carried was the key to all that he wanted to know—­first from Tavish, if he had lived, and now from the girl—­that it took him a moment or two to understand what he saw in his companion’s face.  He realized then that his possession of the picture and the manner in which it had come into his keeping were matters of great perplexity to her, and that the woman whom he had met in the Transcontinental held no significance for her at all, although he had told her with rather marked emphasis that this woman—­whom he had thought was her mother—­had been searching for a man who bore her own name, O’Doone.  The girl was plainly expecting him to say something, and he reiterated this fact—­that the woman in the coach was very anxious to find a man whose name was O’Doone, and that it was quite reasonable to suppose that her name was O’Doone, especially as she had with her this picture of a girl bearing that name.  It seemed to him a powerful and utterly convincing argument.  It was a combination of facts difficult to get away from without certain conclusions, but this girl who was so near to him that he could almost feel her breath did not appear fully to comprehend their significance.  She was looking at him with wide-open, wondering eyes, and when he had finished she said again: 

“My mother is dead.  And my father is dead, too.  And my aunt is dead—­up at the Nest.  There isn’t any one left but my uncle Hauck, and he is a brute.  And Brokaw.  He is a bigger brute.  It was he who made me let him take this picture—­two years ago.  I have been training Tara to kill—­to kill any one that touches me, when I scream.”

It was wonderful to watch her eyes darken, to see her pupils grow big and luminous.  She did not look at the picture clutched in her hands, but straight at him.

“He caught me there, near the creek.  He frightened me.  He made me let him take it.  He wanted me to take off my....”

A flood of wild blood rushed into her face.  In her heart was a fury.

“I wouldn’t be afraid now—­not of him alone,” she cried.  “I would scream—­and fight, and Tara would tear him into pieces.  Oh, Tara knows how to do it—­now!  I have trained him.”

“He compelled you to let him take the picture,” urged David gently.  “And then....”

“I saw one of the pictures afterward.  My aunt had it.  I wanted to destroy it, because I hated it, and I hated him.  But she said it was necessary for her to keep it.  She was sick then.  I loved her.  She would put her arms around me every day.  She used to kiss me, nights, when I went to bed.  But we were afraid of Hauck—­I don’t call him ‘uncle.’ She was afraid of him.  Once I jumped at him and scratched his face when he swore at her, and he pulled my hair. Ugh, I can feel it now!  After that she used to cry, and she always put her arms around me closer than ever.  She died that way, holding my head down to her, and trying to say something.  But I couldn’t understand.  I was crying.  That was six months ago.  Since then I’ve been training Tara—­to kill.”