All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

THE ONE GIFT. “ And if—if,” murmured Blue Otter, “I used this gift on behalf—of the foreign irl.” * “You may need it to save your own life,” replied Blind Heron, with his ghostly smile. “Suppose that, when the council meets at the Green Corn Dance, this, my other child, Blue Otter, be condemned to die. But if the entygee-hotkee, the white daughter of our enemy, should die—if she die—” Blind Heron did not complete this sentence. He slowly arose. He left the camp as he had come. CHAPTER VIII. NATURE HOLDS HER BREATH. LUE OTTER made no mistake about the nature of the blind chief’s visit. Blind Heron loved him. In his own way, Blind Heron had perceived that he, Blue Otter, had set his foot in perilous ways and had come to warn him. It was even possible that Blind Otter had set m motion that machinery which now accounted for the presence of this girl here in the haunted camp where none might find her. Blue Otter believed this to be possible. He knew it to be possible. In his own method of expression, he would have said: We the branches are Of a single tree. The tree was the Almighty. It was only when the branches broke from the parent stem that they died, so to speak, and were cast into the fire. It was to save him from some such catas- trophe that Blind Heron had now followed him. Blind Heron had guessed his destina- tion. Blind Heron, most likely, had sat with his face in the smoke and had been able to see all things. Blue Otter followed with his keen hear- ing the leisurely retreat of Blind Heron to the water’s edge. He heard a swishing rip- ple in the slough. That was some alligator that had crawled out on the bank for a noon-tide siesta getting out of the red prophet’s way. All animals were like that when Blind Heron was on the trail—turkey or deer even would watch him pass close 138 to them without alarm, the snakes would allow him to tramp upon them, almost, as if favoring his contact; the wildcats and panthers for him were as rabbits. And now Blind Heron poled his canoe away, calmly, through the labyrinthine swamps. Blue Otter, so soon as the receding sounds of the canoe had altogether ceased, left his place by the fire and went out to the place where the girl lay. He tossed back the mosquito-bar and looked at her. There was an expression of both tenderness and awe on his face. It brought a riot of emotion to his heart when he thought of “the one gift” of which the chief medicine-man had just re- minded him, and then associated this re- - minder with the presence of this strange white girl. It cast, somehow, a hue of holi- ness about her, linked her up with eternity and the infinite, with the great serpent, and with Hesukatemeesee, the Great Spirit. There are white teachers who would have their followers believe that they have this power of “the one gift ”—that the thing they most desire in their hearts, that thing will be granted them. But these white pupils are apt to regard the teaching rather as a theory than a fact. So among the red pupils of Blind Heron—among most of them, that is. But not so with Blue Otter. He was of the breed of prophets. He knew. When it came time for him to de- mand “the one gift,” it would be granted him. He had the faith. It was a faith that would have stopped the sun. This faith was in him now as he looked down at the girl. - ‘Her tumbled hair was outspread on the pillow of moss. There was a glow under the white skin of her throat that had not been there before—“ like a grass-fire ”—the mysterious fire of life. But would this fire also go out, like a grass-fire? Or would it kindle into a new day, like the dawn-fire, when the holy sun came up? There was a color in her lips. Her lips were parted. _ Her teeth gleamed through. The doctor part of Blue Otter took note of the teeth —small and perfect, white but not too white. Back of the girl’s present help- lessness there must have been an all but unbroken record of perfect health. comiclboolk C©