Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/242

224 And Connie did go in, and a few minutes later he came out again, and with him came a woman who laughed and sobbed hysterically as she clutched tightly to her breast a packet wrapped in a piece of smoke-tanned buckskin. The woman sank down upon the rock and it was some moments before Connie's awkward efforts to quiet her met with any response. Finally, however, she gained control of herself with an effort:

"I thought you were—were that man. I saw his canoe down there and I thought he had found my hiding place. For days I have been hiding from him—" She paused and Connie cleared his throat.

"Yes'm—I mean no*m. We aren't him," he floundered; "I'm Connie Morgan of the Mounted and this is Ick Far, and we're your friends. But suppose you begin somewhere. Who is this man? And why are you hiding from him? And who was the drowned man? And what made you come up out of the water and scare the Indians?"

"It was this way, " began the woman, speaking in nervous haste, so that her words came in short, jerky sentences. "It all began with that," she pointed to the packet that lay upon the rock