Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/148

 "Yes."

"And now you're going back there?"

"Hardly," she said. "Hardly—even if he'd have me."

Barney nodded. "I thought so; I've set you against all your own people, haven't I?"

He was concerned solely with her as he stood gazing at her; but she was finding herself thinking not of her own affairs at all, but wholly of him for the moment. The expression had returned to his eyes which again let her picture him as the thoughtful little boy,—the good-looking, straight-standing boy with the pleasant, wondering gray eyes looking up at the Indian who was telling him puzzling things about himself and showing him the ring—the ring which accorded so remarkably with the salon in the house on the Rock—which Azen Mabo had received with Barney from the Nomad Indian hunter and fisherman, Noah Jo.

"Did you notice the device carved on the mantel in the big room on Resurrection Rock?" she asked Barney suddenly, destroying his thoughts.

"No; why?"

"It reminded me of your ring. Look at it when you go out there."

She saw him start and his hand automatically, at mention of the ring, had gone to his pocket. She saw his fingers feel for the ring as innumerable times before they must have done; and her witnessing of this simple, unconscious habit by which he was accustomed to assure himself that he still held safe his sole chance of connection with his own people sent a pang through her.

"My people," she started to reply to his earlier question, when the sled from her grandfather's house drew up before the store building. Sam Green Sky,