Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/291

PEACE TALK ways of the Indians and he meant to impress this old man first of all with his plains-Indian training; so he schooled himself to patience.

The Indian eyed him furtively from under heavy eyebrows while he smoked. And the sun beat savagely down upon the sand of that basin, and Luck's vision blurred with the pain that throbbed behind his eyes. But the facial discipline of the actor was his to command, and he permitted his face to give no sign of what he felt or thought.

The Indian leaned slowly, lifted a brown hand, made a studied gesture or two and waited, his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon Luck. It was as if he were saying to himself: "We'll see if this white man can speak in the sign-talk of the Indians."

Luck lifted his two hands, drew them slowly apart to say that he had come a long way. Then, using only his hands—sometimes his fingers only—he began to talk; to tell the old Navajo that he and eight other white men were sheriffs and that they were chasing four white men (since he had no sign that meant Mexican) who had stolen money; that they had come from Albuquerque—and there he began to draw in the sand between them a crude 279