All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

He kept on traveling, but it was no longer on his feet. The bolt that had hit him was an explosion that seemed to lift him as wind whirls a leaf. He whirled ahead. This was a recollection from his youth—that time he had been captured by men. It was a crazy spell all fire and pain. In a last fierce spasm for freedom and life he gnashed and kicked. There for a moment he believed that he would yet win out. But a red blindness, then a swift suffocation, was upon him. A quiver shook him, and he was dead. The dead boar lay with his big head stretched out across the girl’s feet. She also was down. She seemed to be as life- less as he was. The boar bled. The ancient trees that crowded around. this haunted Seminole camp must have seen some queer and tragic sights in their day, but they could never have looked down upon a thing like this. There for a long period it seemed as if here was all that there had been of animate life here in the woods or anywhere. Primitive Brute and the Woman; Hog and a Soul. The mocking-bird and the squirrel were gone. The skunk had disappeared into the gopher-cave. The followers of the dead boar had fled like fantoms. A deadly silence had fallen. Only the red sunbeams, of all the things that suggested life and movement, seemed to have the courage to draw nearer, take a closer look. But the sun: was up over the flat rim of the Ever-. glades, and a shaft of reddish-golden light came through the underbrush, swift and deft, to finger the hair of the girl, try to revive ther wilted orchid, caress ‘her cheek and chin, then scrutinize the beast at her feet. The girl never moved. ‘ There had been no ‘movement, so far as @ white man could have observed, even when another actor stood on this sylvan stage. The newcomer was an_ Indian. Many a white man, busy with his thoughts and this affairs in some Big Cypress camp— even with his hounds about ‘him—has raised his eyes to find an Indian standing near him. This Indian had appeared like that, as suddenly and silently as a specter. 5 He was a youth possibly of twenty-two or twenty-three, tawny rather than red, slender, not very tall, but exquisitely formed. He wore nothing but a kilted shirt, belted at the waist and coming to his knees. There was a rifle in his hands. ‘There was a pack on his back. At his belt there was a shot-pouch and a foot-long hunting-knife in a buckskin sheath. There are moments like the moments of a dream, the contents of which have noth- ing to do whatsoever with the lapse of time. This was such a moment now. There had been a number of them for the Indian, perhaps—all the tyme he had stood hidden at the edge of the clearing and watched, then when he had fired the shot that had killed the boar, and now as he looked again. | For he was not only a full-blooded Semi- nole of the woods. It might have been no- ticed that he wore the hair of the top and -back of his head in two small, tight plaits, or queues, or scalp-locks, showing that he was a priest of the tribe, a medicine-man, a lawgiver. And what could he have been doing here in this realm of ghosts? On his face was the look of the ghost- seer. His face was inexpressibly fine and thoughtful, so smooth and delicately chis- eled that it was almost feminine. He had very fine eyes, large and wide apart, liquid and almost black. Most of his expression was in his eyes. The rest of -his face was expressive—expressive of many things, in- cluding patience and strength—but it was expressive as the face of a bronze statue is expressive, without movement. The time seemed long since the shot was fired, and™yet there could have been no ap- preciable delay. Up there in the dome formed by the over- arching trees a butterfly encountered the drift of smoke from the rifle and fluttered away from it. Beyond the camp the tram- pled brush and herbs were righting them- selves with little rustling snaps. Then with a deft speed that still seemed leisurely, the Seminole was kneeling at the side of the girl, Without apparent effort he had thrown the dead boar aside with a single movement of his hand. His hands, like his bare feet, were slender. His waist cCoOmiclbooks C©