All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 43: what you’re looking at

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THE ONE GIFT, knife and wrenched Shuiski’s revolver free. He turned and covered Carlo. “ Knife—you take ’em,” said Blue Ot- ter, speaking softly. And Muriel, her weakness forgotten, re- covered the knife that Carlo had let fall. “You—you turn! You look other way!” This time the order had been for Carlo, and Carlo obeyed. ‘“‘ No kill,” the Seminole whispered as he slackened his hold on Shuiski’s throat. Then there was a crashing scramble and Carlo had sprung away—first to the cover of a ruined chuko, then to the cover of the scrub palmetto, then the engulfing jungle. In the silence that followed, both Mu- riel and Blue Otter heard the thing that Carlo may have heard before therm. It may have been this that had given him the courage for his breakaway. Or it may have been merely Carlo’s knowledge of how léath a Seminole would be to kill a white man when that white man was running away. But over the still air there came the un- mistakable thud of an automobile. ‘ Theirs!” cried Muriel. She would have recognized the cough of that engine anywhere. Wherever she was, whatever the circumstances, it would have brought back to her a memory and a sense of terror. “For you—I kill,” said Blue Otter, swiftly but as softly as ever. He had crouched forward and picked up his abandoned gun. His eyes were on the forest where Carlo had disappeared. “No, no!” she cried softly. away!” | Their eyes met. So did their thought. Their thought was this: how far could they go, with her so weak, before they should be overtaken? “ Come ~ CHAPTER XIX, SNAKES AND LILIES. ‘s O good thing is done in vain!”—a bit of the ancient wisdom that has its expression in every tongue, even in the language of the ancient Mayas of Yucatan, even in the medicine-talk of these oo shy nephews of the Mayas in southern Florida. It may have been in the thought of Tommy Tigertail himself as he labored at fashioning that canoe of his before the lightning struck him. The canoe still lay there, where the dead man had left it, untouched by the other Indians. “ Still his,” as they would have said. But the more generous theology that had brought Blue Otter to this haunted camp in search of wild hogs now brought his thought to the abandoned canoe. ‘No good thing is done in vain! ”—and wouldn’t it be a good thing to borrow this canoe of the ghostly owner? Blue Otter believed that it would be. Thus he could let his mind go to unearthly matters even when earthly problems were pressing him the hardest. Which is, after all, the way it generally is with men, be they white or red. Without a word he caught the girl’s hand, led her toward the slough. In si- lence she followed him. Both of them were listening. They were like hunted - creatures—curiously mated, like two deer of a different species, yet responsive to the same sympathies, capable of subtle under- standings, mutually trustful. Not until she saw the canoe lying half-sunk in the water-trail did Muriel guess the Indian’s purpose, yet she followed him with as perfect a trust as if she had known him always, been a blood-sister to him, or some- thing closer. He bade her wait, then slid into the dark water up to his waist. He emptied the canoe and righted it with easy skill. He helped her into it, then gave her a bush to hold, thus keeping the canoe in place while he returned to the camp. How she held her breath and listened all the time that he was gone! But again the silence had settled down. The engine of the distant automobile had been stopped. The noise of it had fright- ened the native creatures into awed quiet. Then Blue Otter had returned. Vaguely she had guessed that he had gone back to kill the white man he had left there, and this brought nothing to her but a sort of fierce satisfaction. But she saw that she had been mistaken. comiclboolk C©