All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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34 Blue Otter had returned laden. He had his pack and his gun, meat and even a number of the Indian pumpkins. He put these into the canoe. From a tangle of driftwood he drew a stick, long and slender and bleached white, but strong enough to serve him as a push- pole. With this he drove the canoe si- lently into the canoe-trail by which Blind Heron had come. This part of the canoe-trail was like a narrow river with submerged banks over- grown with jungle. It was a leafy corridor with a water floor. The water was brown but limpid. There were depths in it sug- gestive of bottomless caves, shallows of sand and cypress logs. Big fish shadowed through the water. Soft-shelled turtles spun and disappeared. Only the moccasin snakes held their place—coiled on roots and fallen logs, or loosely curved where they had been swimming in the water. Blue Otter, standing upright in the stern of the canoe, continued to drive it forward in watchful silence. His eyes saw every- thing. He wove his canoe as deftly through the labyrinth as if this had been a loom and the canoe his shuttle. Perhaps this was in his thought. Was there any limit to thé strange designs woven by the one man and the one woman since the world began? Some thought like this kept recurring to Muriel Sangree, in any case. She was seated well forward in the ca- noe, but her back was to the prow, and her eyes came up again and again to Blue Ot- ter’s face. The face was bronze. There was a slight slant to the widely separated eyes. They were still eyes to remind her of the eyes of that Russian wolfhound she had owned. But eyes and face had lost their strange- ness to this extent: they had come to mean friendship, sympathy, understanding. Again that féeling came over her that she and this youth were, after all, of the same race. Their souls were of the same race. It was only the bodies of them that were disguised—en carnival. Their eyes met. ‘“Where are you going?” she asked. “Away! I will have to think!”—this ALL-STORY WEEKLY. always in his murmuring voice, scarcely louder than the purling water. | “To your people?” ‘““T am shut off from my people.” ‘“As I am from mine!” They had come. into a broad pool, or woodland lake, thick-set all about with the pressing jungle. Half of the surface of the pond was covered with broad leaves and glistening lilies—some white and some pink. Almost all of the pond was domed over by the far-reaching branches. These branches were like the groins of ruined arches—ruins hung with vines and matted thick with ferns and orchids. Through the green shadows of the place two wood-ibis, like the white ghosts of birds, winged silently away. “ Here we are safe,” Blue Otter conveyed in his soft but broken speech. ‘ We are safe for a while—long enough for you to get back your strength.” “TY think of the trouble that I am caus- ing you,” said Muriel, “‘ and of the trouble that I have brought to my father.”’ There was always a long pause between whatever she said and the Seminole’s re- sponse. He thought before he spoke, and his face was the face of a sphinx. “By land,” he said, and he indicated the region that lay about them to the north, the west, and the south, “ we may again encounter the white men who are your enemies and mine. The white men are strong. They mean to do you evil. And I dare not take you to my people. They would do you no evil; but they might do nothing to save you from the hands of your enemies, these enemies being white.” ‘* Leave me,” said Muriel. ““T cannot leave you.” “Leave me. You may lose your life.” He looked at her soberly. Their eyes met. A tinge of scarlet came into her cheek. She had read his thoughts as plainly as if he had spoken. The silence roared: “What is my life compared with your welfare? If I die I live. And I would live happily if I died for you.” She knew that her thought was speaking through her eyes as well, not so clearly. perhaps, but as earnestly: comiclboolk C©