Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/41

 he glanced about at the trees, "second growth woods, only a bit older; and Indians like Asa Redbird."

"You mean—"

"I lived with them; yes, Miss Carew. Until I was seven years old. I thought I was an Indian myself. Some Chippewas—a good man, Azen Mabo and his wife—had me. I don't remember ever thinking that they were my parents; I guess I had some sort of memory of other Indians who had me before. But I can remember the day Azen told me that I was white."

He said this quite without bitterness, simply as a statement of a fact; but Ethel saw his lips press tightly together, involuntarily; his eyes gazed vacantly far away, and something within Ethel's breast seemed to tug and draw taut. Consciously as she observed him, she was looking for mark of Indian in his features—for a sallowness of skin or flattening of cheek bone. The glare of the noon sun and the dazzle from the snow gave a light to exaggerate any coarseness blunting of feature; but it showed him only fairer of skin and with purer proportions in his face than he had seemed to possess before. And, unconsciously, her gaze gave him to her now as a little boy in poor, ragged clothing—a fair-skinned, good-looking little boy with that same pleasant, likable look in his gray eyes—standing in an Indian hut in woods like these and looking up at an Indian, like Asa, who was telling him that he was white.

"Azen told me he got me from another Indian—a man named Noah Jo, who had had a boat and moved around a good deal," Loutrelle went on. "He didn't find out much about me; for Noah Jo was sick when he sent for Azen and died about the time Azen got there. Azen took, with me, Noah Jo's rifle and boat