The Argosy, April 1912 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

42 What had awakened him, and how long he had been close to me in my furtive march I did not know, but I felt like a schoolboy whose ‘clever truancy has, been detected and balked. I stood there for a moment, speechless with mortification. Then I strode forward. “Be off!” I growled. “What d’ye mean by spying on me like this? Be off, I say! Back to the camp!” He inclined his shaven head reverently at my command and stirred not one inch, I sprang at him, full of petty rage, and re- solved to enforce my commands by ‘physical strength. Then I halted and involuntarily- recoiled a step in sheer amazement. Some one had just stepped from out of the black depths of the wood and now stood between us in the vivid glow of moonshine. It was a woman. She glanced at me in open-eyed curiosity. Then her gaze fell carelessly upon the sav- age. She made a curt gesture. The Indian bowed to the ground, his hand to his fore- head. Then, with a sudden backward movement, he glided silently out of sight. And the woman and I remained facing each other. I had had time to improve on the first quick look. Now I saw her clearly, flooded as she was by the southern moonlight. She was tall, slender, infinitely graceful, more in aspect like some woodland sprite or naiad than like mortal. Her black hair, rippling and glossy, was unconfined. It fell below her knees. Her eyes were huge, dark, fathomless. She had a bearing that, nothwithstanding her evident youth, was nothing less than regal. Her face was that of an Indian, but without the harsh outlines and ridic- ulously high cheek bones of the savages I had seen. The features were delicate and sensitive, with a nameless, wistful appeal in their ex- pression. Her complexion, while richly dark, was not coppery like those of the other redskins. She was clad in a mantle of white deer-hide, soft as velvet, and decked with many old beaded designs. Her little feet were enclosed in white deer-skin moccasins. In one graceful hand she bore a bow, and a quiver full of arrows was slung across her shoulders. “Diana!” I muttered, “Diana of the olden myths! life again here in the Americas! involuntarily ; And come to Verily THE ARGOSY. the moon goddess walks the earth as in the days of Endymion.” She listened with eager, child-like atten- tion. But it dawned upon me that she could not understand one word of my foolish rhapsody. So I spoke agai this time in Indian dialect. “Who are you?” I breathed: still lost in wonder. “Tam the princess,” she replied, in a perfectly self-possessed voice, and as though wondering just a little at my ignorance in asking such a question. ’ Her voice was soft, with a girlish, un- spoiled quality that was singularly sweet. “The princess?” I echoed, blankly. ““Of—of what?” “Of America,” was the quiet response. ‘““T might have guessed it,” I answered, seeking to. humor her; yet still half under that strange spell which tempted me to kneel and do homage to this utterly delightful forest deity. “And you,” one of the two ‘ white manitous,’ as envoys to the king?” “How did you know?” I cried in as- tonishment. ‘Your escort sent on a courier to tell the king,” she answered. “The courier reach- ed us to-night at the set of sun. I was curious to see you—and for another cause. So I walked forth to meet you. ’Tis but two hours’ march to the king’s palace.” “The king?” I repeated. “ You mean Powhatan ?” she went on evenly, ‘are who came eV CS: “Oh,” I exclaimed. “And you are his daughter, perhaps? That is why you called yourself the ‘ princess ’?” ‘““Assuredly. But how did you chance to be so far from camp. We were told you came heavily guarded and could not es- cape. Yet I found you here with but one single watchman. My father will be angry when he learns how lax a guard has been kept over you. With the magic powers you possess, you might have escaped?” “Escaped ? Guarded?” I echoed. “Then I was right in my fears. We are not going to your father under an escort of honor, but we are being taken to him as prisoners !”’ “Yes,” she assented. ‘Yet you go the more comfortably, because of the tricks you played on the warriors. They are ignorant. They take you for manitous. My father is very wise and, of course, knows better.” COM Ghook CO