AFTER a long while, he did not know how long, but ages and ages, he was listening once more for the echo of that explosion, and thinking all the while: "Scanlon, Scanlon—I've got to get that traitor, Scanlon."
But he wasn't standing up any more. Why, he—he was sopping wet—he was in water, afloat in it like a log and the water was cold. Almighty, but it was cold! He was not alone in the water though. Somebody was alongside—tugging at him—trying to get him out of the water—trying to get him on to a log—no, into some kind of boat. He tried to grip the arm that held him, a strong and muscled arm, and failed; he tried to help himself and could not. He was hurt; the back of his head was beginning to pain him terribly.
"Who . . . who beaned me?" he groaned and a voice, a voice that should have been familiar and yet was not, hissed into his ear a stern command to silence. Danger was still near evidently. And it was still dark. His mind swam away in this darkness off and off until he thought it would never come back at all. When it did come back the sun was shining brightly. That is, it was shining brightly outside but he was somewhere inside.
His first waking sensation was one of heat—heat. Lord! it was hot. This was an agreeable contrast, however, for his last waking sensation had been one of cold—cold and wet. Yes; for he was clammy now on one side but hot, parching hot on the other. And no wonder! Some good Samaritan had been drying him out—by a fire.
Experimentally he straightened and began, of his own strength, to turn the dry front of him away from the embers, the damp back toward them. The sensation was delightful but the effort exhausting. His half-opened eyes closed again; his cheek was pillowed on something soft—something soft and hairy—on some kind of skin or fur. Again the sensation was delightful. Weak, warm, relaxed, he dozed off. But presently his eyes were open and staring curiously, taking further account of his surroundings. He was in a sort of bungalow, long and narrow, but crudely carpeted with skins.
Why, no—it wasn't a bungalow; it was a lodge—an Indian lodge, for there was a squaw—a little squaw—a pretty little squaw. She sat cross-legged on a stool regarding him absorbedly from the distance of two or three yards; she wore moccasins, leggings and a cougar skin for a skirt, a sleeved vest of deer-skin with the hair removed, fringed and slashed, and there was bead-work upon it. There were strings of tiny pink shells alternating with other strings of tiny white ones about her neck; some barely encircling it, some looping low upon her breast. Two braids of jet-black hair fell one in front of each shoulder.
The squaw had very black eyes but in complexion she was very light—white with brunette trimmings, as it were—yet unmistakably a squaw. The look she gave him was of the wild. It had the gravity of centuries in it, though the girl seemed about sixteen. After his first start of surprise Henry stared and then managed a smile. Instantly the face of the little squaw brightened; red lips parted and white teeth gleamed at him most amiably, most encouragingly. He closed and opened his eyes quickly to make sure he had not been dreaming.
"I guess you are better," she said, in a perfect idiom with only the slightest trace of accent. The voice was refined—even cultured.
"I guess I am," said Harrington, struggling with a husk in his throat, but managing another smile.
"Perhaps you would like some more broth now."
"More broth?" murmured Henry confusedly.
"Yes," smiled the little squaw in a most self-satisfied way, and already she was up, passing round him with padding moccasined footsteps to the fireplace, where he heard the clang of a kettle cover; and a few seconds later she was back and holding a graniteware cup to his lips. Preceding the cup came a most delightful savor to his nostrils, a gamy, spicy fragrance that made him immensely hungry. The broth tasted as good as it smelled.
"It is delicious," he said, smacking his lips and feeling strangely content.
"Where am I?" it occurred to him to ask.
"On Lahleet's Island."
"And who is Lahleet?" Henry inquired. "Never heard of the lady, or her island."
"I am," the Indian girl answered demurely.
Henry started slightly and found himself contemplating the little woman with speculative interest. She was certainly a self-contained little piece.
"And how did I get to your island?"
"I brought you in my canoe." The Indian girl's face was still demure.
She was a part of his puzzle. Slowly Henry's mind attacked the problem of what had happened since he heard that last dull explosion. "Where did you bring me from?"
"From Adam John's island—Hurricane Island, that is."
Henry's mind associated quickly. Hurricane Island! That was the island Quackenbaugh and Scanlon were arguing about on that night a thousand years ago in Boland's den. Was that, then, Adam John's island? Henry was interested in Adam John and all that pertained to him for he had crawled out into No Man's Land one night and brought Adam John back with two bullet holes in him, and while Henry was doing this he acquired a bullet hole for himself. If you have saved a man's life you feel a proprietary interest in the man ever after.
The white man's slowly clearing consciousness centered in the girl again. She was the prettiest, the demurest, the most unaffected little thing! She had dropped down before him cross-legged, within reach of his hand, as if it were the most natural thing to do, and was answering his questions in a mood of entire neighborliness, contemplating him wonderingly the while as if he were some strange gift the gods had brought to her lodge. If the Shell Point Indians were like this—well, no wonder Mr. Boland could be sentimental over them!
"You paddle a canoe?" he asked, and found himself taking her right hand and feeling of it doubtingly. Yes; it was a calloused little hand and sinewy; yet the back of it was soft, soft as velvet. He lifted it to where his eye could contemplate its form. It was a trifle thick and square for Caucasian standards of beauty; but none the less it was—charming.
"Who are you?" he asked abruptly, as sensing some mystery in her personality.
"I am a little Siwash," the girl answered with delicious gravity. Henry, still toying with the fingers of that hand, made a startling discovery—first with the sense of touch and then by a quick glance. He held the tips of the fingers toward her.
"Manicured," he accused.
But the Indian maid was undismayed. "I am a manicured Siwash," she smiled complacently.
Henry regarded her doubtfully a long time; and then, as if the enigma of her personality was too complex for weakened nerves, his eyes wandered past the girl, past the stool on which she had been sitting, past the bunk of skins which was the only detail of the furnishings his eyes had yet made out—passed on and then halted, staring wide. The windows were few and small, the interior was rather shadowy, but he made out—a piano! And a phonograph! Window curtains, too, of cretonne.
Lifting his astonished self upon an elbow, Henry took in the whole ensemble—a strange mixture of the crudities of an Indian lodge with the refinements of civilization—a conglomeration that heightened instead of allayed curiosity. In the shock of it Harrington tried to sit up but a whirl of pain shrieked through the back of his head.
"Oh, my . . . oh, my heavens!" he groaned and an involuntary hand went up. It came in contact with a mountain of bandages and surgical dressings.
"Who—who fixed me up?" he demanded confusedly.
"I fixed you up," smiled the Indian girl, again immensely well satisfied with herself.
"That was awfully kind of you, I'll say," admired Henry. "But—it feels like a doctor's job."
"I have had a nurse's training," explained the girl, "besides other training—two years at the Mission School in Seattle and two years in Carlisle."
"Um," grunted Henry, vastly relieved. That explains things. "He had heard of these cases; Carlisle Indians reverting to the blanket. The girl was less a mystery to him now; more a pleasant incident.
"You are a good little Siwash!" he approved, and patted the soft hand some more. He even reached out and patted the soft cheek and passed an exploring hand over the forehead because of an impulse to know the touch of that glossy hair. The little maid suffered these familiarities without protest. Perhaps that was Indian stoicism. Perhaps she liked it—this compliment of the white man's attention. "You are a darned nice little girl, Lahleet!" Henry approved, when suddenly gazing at her face brought another to his mind. "What time is it?" he asked abruptly, and fumbled for his watch.
"Eight o'clock," answered the girl, glancing at a tiny ivory clock.
"Eight o'clock of when?" Henry was still confused as to how much time had flown.
"Of Wednesday morning."
"Then I can make it," he gulped eagerly, "if—if How long will it take me to get to town, Lahleet? I positively must be there at ten o'clock."
The girl was all sympathetic interest. "It is only four miles to Edgewater," she assured him. "I can have you on the mainland in five minutes. Adam John is waiting there now with his flivver; he will put you in town in fifteen minutes more."
"Thank God!" ejaculated Henry. "I had an engagement to play golf with Miss Boland at ten. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
The slightest possible change in expression appeared upon the face of the Indian girl.
"If you can stand the trip so soon," she qualified.
"Oh, I could stand the trip all right," declared Henry, "if—if I only had some more of that broth."
"Why, of course," assured the girl, suddenly gracious again. "Let me think," she exclaimed, and squatted motionless again while some inscrutable complex formed behind the mask of her pretty face. "Yes," she declared with emphasis, while the dark eyes glittered with the force of a new purpose, "yes, I can add something that will help—something that will make the broth stronger."
"That will be fine." Henry smacked his lips in pleasant anticipation. "Lahleet, you certainly are the goods."
As if pleased with the compliment, the girl bounded up and the moccasined feet again went padding about the fireplace. Her every movement was grace.
"You are herb-wise?" asked Henry, as he saw her crumbling dried leaves into a saucepan with water, and putting it to simmer amid the embers.
"All Indians are that," the girl answered quietly. "When it boils it will be ready."
"I think I might get up out of your way," proposed Henry, looking up as she stood almost over his feet.
"If your clothes are dry," his nurse consented, and gave him a hand.
"Gosh!" groaned the man, for again there was a chariot race of pain in the back of his head. "I must have got an awful whack!"
Henry found her frame as strong as steel and sturdy as a column as she half-lifted him to his feet and steadied his steps toward the couch of skins. As he balanced experimentally upon his legs, he caught sight through one of the narrow windows of the snow cap of Mount Gregory far in the distance, floating on a haze of mist.
"You put your window where you could see that?" he beamed, pointing to the hoary mountain that to him was like a friend.
The girl nodded. "For a thousand years those snows have fed the streams where my people fished and hunted," she said. "For a thousand years that mountain has been God to them. For a thousand it shall be God to me."
There was something infinitely old in the maiden's face as she made this mystical affirmation; and Harrington stared at her wonderingly. Her manner was not only cryptic; there was in it an odd suggestion of the occult. Perhaps it was the perception of this which impelled Henry suddenly to unburden himself of that central knot of interrogations which jangled so painfully in his mind that he had shrunk from uttering them.
"Perhaps you know just what happened to me," he blurted. "How I got in the water . . . who it was that pulled me out—and—all the rest."
"You fell into the water, I think; or were knocked in. It was Adam John who pulled you out and took you to his island; and Adam John who came for me and helped me bring you here."
"But Adam John? . . . How did Adam John happen to be there?"
A sizzling sound proceeded from among the embers. "Oh, my medicine is boiling over!" the girl cried.
"It tastes bitter—a little bitter," observed Harrington when she had drained off a clear liquor from the saucepan and stirred it carefully into the broth.
"That is the medicine." The girl's nod was reassuring.
"It's good though, all the same," affirmed Henry, like an appreciative patient, and drained the contents in deep draughts declaring after each that he felt better already; and between each of them his eyes slanted upward at his nurse. The picture she made continued to attract him; but the mystery of her puzzled him. His memory seemed trying to associate her with something past—but for some reason could not.
"You should doze off for a little now," his nurse suggested.
"I must doze off quick then for I've got to wake up quick. Sit down here, you little Siwash, and hold my hand; perhaps I will sleep quicker." Henry was in a weakly playful mood.
With a whimsical smile, as if she found white men delightfully absurd, Lahleet dropped upon her heels beside the couch, the top of which was only six or eight inches from the floor, and took hold of Henry's hand. He contemplated her placidly. He liked the touch of her hand. Presently he was wondering how it would feel upon his cheek. To make certain he laid it there.
"That feels good, Lahleet," he sighed, "wonderfully cool and soothing. Perhaps if you would stroke my face I would doze off quicker."
In sympathetic gravity, the Indian girl began compliance—a soft, cooling, almost caressing touch, again and again repeated—a ministry of service that brought her face close to his face, some wild scent into his nostrils. Harrington, amused and gratified, enjoyed noting again that, aside from an aboriginal flattening of cheek bones, the details of her features were good while their combination was altogether charming and attractive.
Through half-closed eyes he mused and then proposed abruptly: "Would you kiss me, Lahleet?"
It was purely sensuous and casual, this desire. It had struck him that it would be an agreeable sensation to test the softness of those berry-red lips.
And if the Indian girl felt either surprise or a thrill she did not betray it. On the contrary she studied the face of her patient gravely as considering whether from the clinical standpoint a kiss might be good for him. She appeared to decide that it would and with the most professional manner, bent over and laid a velvety pair of lips atop of his own for an instant of time, a touch that was more like the caress of a kitten than of a woman; and yet there was warmth and rousing in it.
Henry lay quiescent, gratified but—lips working as if they yearned for a fuller experience.
"You are getting all waked up instead of dozing," his nurse decided, disappointedly. "I think I had best sing to you." Henry felt that he had been reproved—very delicately; not for asking for the kiss but for that yearning, wistful quiver for another one.
Lahleet rose quickly and took a banjo-shaped instrument from the top of the piano. It yielded yeeping bird-like notes in a very limited combination of tones but the girl played them over and over with an absorption in which her expression changed gradually from a kind of barbaric prettiness to something that was almost beauty.
"I cannot think that you are an Indian," Henry interrupted, "except for the scenery"—and he indicated the strings of shells and the fringes and slashes on the deer-skin vest.
The girl's eyes smoldered for an instant as in stubborn rebellion at the fate which had made of her a mixed-blood; then brightened quickly. "My father was a white man," she boasted. "My mother's father was a white man, but her mother was the daughter of Chief Keemah; that makes me a You do the arithmetic!" she broke off impulsively.
But Henry was becoming too drowsy for problems in arithmetic. He fell asleep instead.