WHAT wonder the simple-minded Adam John found his eyes, his soul riveted by this gushing sack of gold! What wonder that when he had pushed those fugitive coins back into the heap he found it impossible to withdraw his fingers but stood crouched forward with hands half-buried in the yellow pile—clinging to the coins as something he could not let go—holding them down as if they were demons that might leap at and destroy him—eyes blinking in the beams refracted by the glittering pile that sparkled and quivered like something alive.
"There," laughed Henry exultantly; for he saw that the gold had won. "There is your twenty thousand dollars, Adam, for your little old island."
The Indian was still blinking at the glittering mass before him, his fingers clutching or quivering so that there came a slight agitation from the center of the pile that made the coins more scintillant still. The savage in him appeared to have succumbed completely to the lure of the gold.
But slowly as a man gathers his resources for a tremendous moral struggle there were signs of a gathering strength in the face of the Indian. His teeth bit into his lips; his brows were lowered; his eyes narrowed. Deliberately he began to straighten, deliberately to withdraw his hands. At length they were free—entirely free of the gold. Above the pile he rubbed the fingers of one hand against the fingers of the other as if shaking off the last hateful particle which might have adhered. At length he sat erect once more. His hands were off the table entirely and folded across his chest, fingers clasping the muscles of the arms tightly as if he restrained a mighty impulse. And yet his eyes would not give up their fixity. They were glued to that shining cone of coin. The struggle in his half-savage breast was still on.
How fierce that conflict was Harrington realized when he saw Adam John's eyes suddenly shiny with tears. Tears may come once or twice in a lifetime to the eyes of an adult Indian. Adam John's eyes since infancy had not been wet save from enemy gas. Now, bright from their briny bath, they found the eyes of Henry Harrington, but not with a look of grateful surrender. It was a glance of loving reproach they gave, after which the stiff lips of Adam John labored his look into words: "You—you make temptation for me, Lieutenant!"
Temptation!
The combination of that glance, those simple words, the tone in which they were uttered, cut through Harrington like a knife. All at once he saw what he was doing—that he was sccking vulgarly to lure this young man away from an ideal which, if wrong, was one that he ought to be persuaded out of, reasoned, guided out of—but not sordidly bribed out of. It filled him with a sudden sense of shame. But still his speech lagged behind his thought.
"Why, I'm showing you how much money is being offered for your land," he argued.
"Is that all you do?" gasped Adam weakly, and passed a calloused yellow hand over his perspiring brow. "Don't! I no want to know."
There was a silence for many seconds in the smelly, smoky lodge, and then Harrington said abruptly: "Here, hold the bag!"
While Adam, trembling, held the sack, Henry in handfuls scooped up the double eagles and flung them hatefully within it. In the midst of this operation he was startled by the sense of another presence in the doorway; but before he could lift his eyes even there came a prolonged "Oo-o-o!" It was a shivery, shuddery note of exclamation, and it was uttered of course by Lahleet, after which she fixed one glance on Harrington and then grew frostily silent.
"Adam is disappointingly stubborn," Harrington said. "Even after I have been to the pains of showing him just how much money twenty thousand dollars is, he still refuses it."
"And that," commented Lahleet with a straight lip and a hard eye, "that is a refusal which a white man can't understand."
"Oh, yes—I can understand it," frowned Henry, for he was feeling very disappointed, "but it's foolish all the same."
"Foolish to be loyal to an ideal?" persisted the girl, advancing upon him.
"If it's a foolish ideal!" retorted Henry.
Lahleet, indignant, flashed a swift word in Chinook to Adam John; and the Indian as if in obedience to command swung the bag of gold pieces to his shoulder. "It heavy. Me carry for you," he said.
The girl must have been impatient to see the money out of the lodge and off the island—for when Henry, a little put out with her and a little miffed at himself, walked with a kind of stiff dignity behind Adam John to where he lowered the gold to a cedar stump beside the boat-landing, Lahleet followed at a distance, as overseeing the departure.
A survey of the channel revealed to Harrington no sign of his engineer and the man with the sawed-off shotgun. No doubt they were still circling the island, patrolling in a leisurely, unobstrusive fashion so as not to excite suspicion; and would heave into view presently. Nevertheless, this slight delay served to increase his annoyance. When he saw Adam John studying the height of the sun anxiously, as if time pressed with him also, Henry spoke up sharply: "My boat will be here presently. You need not wait."
"Have to go nets," Adam John explained laconically. "Lieutenant scuse!"
"Sure!" averred Henry, with emphasis, although he could have bitten his tongue out with chagrin. He had failed again. What should he do next, he wondered, gritting his teeth in rising anger—mostly with himself.
After a balk or two the engine started and Adam John was borne swiftly out into the channel and headed up the basin.
"Men like John Boland ought to be very careful what they do to the souls of men like Adam John," Lahleet remarked from behind.
"But Mr. Boland did not know a thing about it," Harrington defended quickly.
"It's the same thing," the girl averred, with the black eyes round and tender in their reproaches. "What you were doing to Adam John's soul is the same thing that Mr. Boland does to all souls. He crushes their ideals under an avalanche of gold. He drowns them in a tide of eager hope for wealth and prosperity. He intoxicates them with an atmosphere of flattery and mutual admiration. Quackenbaugh, Manter, Scanlon and the rest, why, they are mere ambition-drunk satellites of Boland, doing the same thing to others that he by his wicked genius has done to them."
"Mere unjust prejudice, Lahleet, every bitter word of it," denounced Harrington; then demanded with sudden anxiety: "But you still believe in Mr. Boland? You are still going to help me with the Indians?"
The girl surveyed him very calmly.
"Yes; I am going to help you; because I believe that what Mr. Boland proposes for the Shell Point Indians will be an inestimable boon for them, and because I believe that he keeps his pledged word. Not because I believe in him or his methods."
"You are stubborn about Mr. Boland, Lahleet, as stubborn as Adam John about his island. But"—Henry tried the effect of a clearing smile—"we won't argue. We two understand and believe in each other, and that's enough—we are still friends and—partners."
"Yes. But the Indian is a man who will not be hurried. He suspects any attempt to hurry him. I have dropped the seed. Now leave the Shell Point families to ruminate upon the idea, to palaver over it around their fires at night, and while they catch and dry their salmon. They will hear about your offer to Adam John. They will laugh and say that Adam was a fool. Some day they will ask for you to come and explain the matter. That will be the day of your opportunity." The girl's face had brightened, her entire manner changed, once she got on to this Shell Point affair.
"And now, if you don't mind being left alone," Lahleet suggested, "I think I must go. My canoe is on the other side of the island and my little Injuns are giving an entertainment tonight at the schoolhouse, so time presses."
"Not at all," assured Henry politely, "I'd walk across with you but" He indicated the sack of gold upon the stump. "Besides, my boat will be here at any minute."
"It's only a hop, skip and a jump for me," laughed the girl. "Good-by, Hen-ree!"
With no more premonition of tragedy than a butterfly when it flits across a field of poppies she danced away from him along the path, turned sharply to the right past where the cow was browsing, gave him one more glimpse of her bright face framed in green leaves and then disappeared in the timber.
"Where the devil is my boat?" speculated Henry, doing an imitation of Napoleon on St. Helena. "They must have stopped to fish. . . . Gee! I wonder if I've got to wait around here all day."
The man might have mused and chafed thus for two or three minutes in his loneliness when, listening for the faint chug of a motorboat, he heard instead a pistol shot and a scream from the forest at his back. The scream he recognized instantly—sharp, piercing, bloodcurdling—it was the voice of little Lahleet in some mortal terror or awful physical agony. That there were cougars on the island, that one had attacked her—this was his first formed theory, as he dashed into the forest.
It alarmed him further that the cry was not repeated.
"Lahleet! Lahleet!" he called loudly that she might know help was coming. No answer came. He dashed on the more wildly, straight ahead at first, and then uncertainly, zigzagging a little this way, and a little that.
"Lahleet! he called more loudly. "Lahleet!" then checked his pace to listen. The only sound that came to him was the violent pounding of his own heart; but as his eyes roved through the short vistas of the forest they stopped at a log-like thing in a crush of ferns, log-like but with certain marked resemblance to a human form. He rushed upon it.
It was the body of a man, face down in the green tangle, wearing a blue flannel shirt and corduroy trousers. The trousers were encircled at the waist by a black leather belt while their bottoms were thrust into high laced boots. The back of the neck showed a reddish skin, purpling into the roots of well-kept hair.
Harrington laid his hand on the back below the left shoulder blade where a heartbeat should have been felt. There was none. Seizing an arm he turned the body over and drew back with a start. It was the face of Eckstrom—Count Eckstrom, with his carefully trimmed Vandyke, with the lace-work of dissipation in the puffs beneath his eyes, and—with a dark spot growing on the breast of the blue flannel shirt. A machinegun fire of questions leaped into Harrington's mind. What was Count Eckstrom doing in, say, a timber cruiser's garb? And how had he got into it so quickly from his golfing clothes? What was he doing on Hurricane Island? What was he doing with a bullet through his heart? And where was Lahleet?
The last question got its answer first. As, turning from the body, Harrington's eyes swept around him in the forest, the girl appeared, standing at a distance of a dozen paces, one hand raised to her pale and distressed face while the other grasped an automatic pistol. Her eyes were fixed upon the body of Eckstrom slowly crushing a new bed for itself in the ferns.
"Lahleet!" Harrington cried.
"The—the horrid brute!" she shuddered, and flung the pistol from her with the last atom of her strength, then fell fainting to the ground.
Harrington caught her almost as she fell.
"Lahleet!" he pleaded frantically, at the same time shaking her gently as if to rouse her. "Lahleet!" Slowly the dark eyes opened, slowly consciousness of her surroundings appeared to bear in upon her mind.
"Your gold!" she exclaimed with a start. "Your gold! Did you leave it alone? There are other men upon the island."
"Never mind the gold!" cried Harrington fiercely. "Are you injured?" His eyes searched her face solicitously, as tenderly he pressed her soft body against his own. How dear she was! What an exquisite little thing of her kind! But she would not be coddled and swung her feet to the ground, steadying herself by a clasp upon his shoulder.
"No, not injured!" she gasped, with a natural satisfaction, and her expression—it seemed to him—was not so much horror that she had taken human life as satisfaction that she had done a viper to his death.
"It's the Indian in her," Harrington thought.
"Your gold!" she insisted. "Your gold!"
Harrington had become suddenly anxious enough. The mere thought of the twenty thousand dollars alone and unguarded—for a time he had not thought of it—was terrifying. As they emerged from the timber his eyes were straining for a glimpse of that cedar stump. It seemed an eternity before he made it out. Yes, there it was. But, God! It was naked! It was empty!
In an instant just what had happened became clear in Harrington's mind. Eckstrom, experienced crook that he was, had divined what he held in the bag upon his shoulder, had followed him with confederates to the island and spied upon him from a bush, awaiting opportunity. This came when Lahleet started upon her lonely walk. The attack upon her had been a fake, a ruse to draw him away from the gold. It had resulted disastrously for Eckstrom; but it had succeeded so far as the original object was concerned. The gold was gone!
Harrington wavered and leaned weakly against a tree. This was a perfectly staggering blow! It had fallen at the most inauspicious moment—threatening, obliterating his whole brilliant prospect. The humiliation of it was crushing. For a moment Henry Harrington was a very much dismayed, a very much embittered young man. Then he rallied. It was tough luck—fierce! Yet he could have done no differently. He had been the victim of cunning plotters. Wrath and resolution were quick within him. He plunged forward. He would survive the blow. He would trace and recover the gold. One scoundrel had got his due. The others should get theirs. Harrington ground his teeth, face aflame. He was "Hellfire" now.
But a new thought struck him like a bullet. There was another to be considered. Lahleet! more innocent victim than himself. It would be unfair to have her bright young life clouded with an ugly story when she was a mere spotless pawn in a desperado's dirty game. This perception, coming to him as he rushed headlong to the beach, helped to steady him, to make his rage cool, calculating and self-controlled.
His first care was to look about for tracks in the damp sand. Yes; there was the mark of the prow of a boat and long plunging strides from it with toes pointing up the bank, and here on the other side they came back again, shorter strides with deeper imprints as of a man grown heavier by the addition of a burden.
Harrington scanned the blue surface of the channel. There was not a boat in sight. Nothing was in sight. Not even the car which should have been waiting for him at the mouth of Cub Creck was visible. For an instant this raised a flicker of hope. The man with the sawed-off shotgun! He might have returned, found the gold setting there unguarded and taken it in. But, no—he would have waited for him—Harrington—to appear. Failing that, he would have investigated.
As if to prove that this theory would not do, here came the boat, chugging belatedly round the point. When the craft forged fully into view, however, Henry saw that it was not the boat he had been expecting. It was freshly painted, dainty and fast—one of those spick-and-span specders with which wealthy men at times amuse themselves and yet, since it was the only craft in sight and seemed making directly for him, Harrington continued to study it narrowly—the more so because there was something familiar about the thickset figure in the stern. This figure waved a hand presently and Henry saw to his surprise and gratification that it was Scanlon. It was fortunate to have shrewd old Scanlon here to report to and counsel with. Yet, what had brought him?
"Carburetor!" erupted the Chief Counsel, as soon as they were in conversational distance. "I thought my chauffeur never would get the darn thing going again. He claims to have a chief engineer's license too."
In acknowledgment of this taunt, a flushed and grease-stained countenance grinned above the engine housing as the launch curved swiftly in. It was Quackenbaugh—to Henry's further surprise and gratification; for this brought the two men here whom he would have most wished at the moment to see. "Some things break right for me anyhow!" he muttered hollowly.
"I told you, Henry, I was always nervous when we had the raw stuff uncaged," the president of Boland Cedar began volubly to explain. "I couldn't stick in my office half an hour. I had to rout out Scanlon and bring my own boat down here. We sent the other fellows home and started in to do the patrolling ourselves, but the engine died on me."
The men seemed well pleased with themselves and equally well pleased with Henry. They looked upon their presence as something of a lark, their nervous fears as something of a joke upon themselves and by this light-hearted manner struck the knife deeper into Henry's heart because of what he had to tell them.
"How'd you come out with the Indian?" cried Quackenbaugh.
"I didn't come out with him. He turned me down," answered Henry miserably. "But that's not the worst of it. The gold's been stolen."
"Stolen!" barked both voices at once, one hoarsely, the other harshly incredulous. "My God!"