All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

THE ONE GIFT. there he stood for a long five or six seconds with his face upraised. The newcomer also was an Indian, dressed much as Blue Otter was, in a kilted shirt that reached his knees. But he was very, very old. The white hair that fell about his face was still abundant, but al- most white. His face was deeply seamed. Especially when he had stood there with his face upraised it would have been seen that his eyes were sightless. _ Even while he stood there with his old face up and his blind eyes staring away he seemed to know that there was a moc- casin coiled there where he would have put his foot at the next step. He touched a spot a little to one side of where the moc- casin was with his bare foot. The poison- ous snake slid away. Blue Otter breathed a name in Seminole. The old man was still twenty or thirty yards away, and Blue Otter’s voice came in but little more than a fluttering whisper. But the old man heard him, and saluted him in turn. Blue Otter said: ‘“‘ Blind Heron, I am here.” Tlhe chief medicine-man replied: “‘ Blue Otter speaks twice.”’ Which was both a jest and a rebuke. For hadn’t Blue Otter already spoken other- wise? He had fired his rifle. He had filled the breeze with a smell of medicine. Nothing more was said after that, until Blind Heron had rested and refreshed him- self. CHAPTER VII. THE SECRET WISDOM. LIND HERON, with a touch here and there of his staff, had found a com- fortable place for himself on one of the cypress-logs which his pupil and adopted son had brought to the fire. On the old man’s face there continued that look of smiling peace which was habitual to him— always as if those sightless eyes of his con- templated some pleasant and beguiling spec- tacle. - | But there was nothing to be learned from this, as the younger man knew. The same 11 expression was on Blind Heron’s face in moments—and hours—of torture, moments of wrath, moments of grave judgment; as, for example, that time he had condemned his own son to death for an infraction of the Seminole’s high code of morals. “Tommy Tigertail, his camp,” said Blind Heron, as if speaking to himself. ‘ The sacred lightning, it struck him. Thus he went West with none of his powers diminished.”’ ‘““T reverence his spirit,” said Blue Otter simply. ‘“Tt was he who saw the blue otter run thrice around your mother’s bearing-lodge the night you were born,” said Blind Heron. ‘“ The old men named you. We knew then that Hesukatemeesee, the Great Spirit, and Chitto-Rakkee, the Great Serpent, had given us a medicine sign.”’ He said this with the air of gentle remi- niscence that any old doctor of the white tribe would have recalled the birth incidents and circumstances of some favorite young man. ‘“T am silent,” said Blue Otter. “But your thoughts make a sound like shouting,” smiled the blind man. “ They hoot like a hundred owls in the night, all hooting at once.” ‘Like them that mourn!” Blue Otter confessed. He stole a furtive glance in the direction of the girl. When they talked their voices still main- tained musical murmur—a_ sound that -wouldn’t have alarmed a grazing deer fifty yards away. There on the platform of the ruined lodge the white girl lay and dreamed under her mosquito-bar undisturbed; and if Blind Heron knew of this other presence he had thus far given no hint of it. He had eaten the meat the younger man gave him. There was ever that smiling calm on his old face as he meditated. “Th coming to this camp,” said Blind Heron at last, ‘‘ you defied the teaching of your ancestors.”’ “The .people were hungry,” Blue Otter replied. ‘‘ I knew that a drove of wild hogs came here. I walked for three days alone and made- medicine with the Great Serpent. I heard his voice.”’ ‘““We have been hungry before.” comiclboolk C©