Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/356



The next day I waited for night, and it seemed the sun would never go down. Then I waited for mid night ; and at last when it came, and no call from the hill, I began to despair. I could hardly repress my anxiety ; my heart beat and beat at every breath, as if it would burst. After all, I said to myself, I am really insane.

I lay down with my face to the low window, look ing out to the dim, grey dawn breaking and flushing like a great surf over the white wall of the sierras to the east.

Maybe I slept an instant, for there, when I looked intently, sat Paquita on the roof of the lower build ing, peering through the rusty bars right into my face.

I had learned the virtue, if not the dignity, of silence, and arose instantly and stole up to the bars.

The poor girl tried, the first thing, to pass me a pistol through the bars, as if that could have been of any use to me there; but it could not be passed between. Then she passed through a thin sheath knife, but never said a word.

She made signs for me to cut away the bars with the knife, that she would come and help me, motioned to the grey surf breaking against the sky in the east, and disappeared.

I hugged that knife to my heart as if it had been a bride come home. I danced mercilessly and Indian- like about my cell, and flourished the knife a