Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/143

 passed a calloused yellow hand over his perspiring brow. "Don't! I no want to know."

There was a silence for many seconds in the smelly, smoky lodge, and then Harrington said abruptly: "Here, hold the bag!"

While Adam, trembling, held the sack, Henry in handfuls scooped up the double eagles and flung them hatefully within it. In the midst of this operation he was startled by the sense of another presence in the doorway; but before he could lift his eyes even there came a prolonged "Oo-o-o!" It was a shivery, shuddery note of exclamation, and it was uttered of course by Lahleet, after which she fixed one glance on Harrington and then grew frostily silent.

"Adam is disappointingly stubborn," Harrington said. "Even after I have been to the pains of showing him just how much money twenty thousand dollars is, he still refuses it."

"And that," commented Lahleet with a straight lip and a hard eye, "that is a refusal which a white man can't understand."

"Oh, yes—I can understand it," frowned Henry, for he was feeling very disappointed, "but it's foolish all the same."

"Foolish to be loyal to an ideal?" persisted the girl, advancing upon him.

"If it's a foolish ideal!" retorted Henry.

Lahleet, indignant, flashed a swift word in Chinook to Adam John; and the Indian as if in obedience to command swung the bag of gold pieces to his shoulder. "It heavy. Me carry for you," he said.

The girl must have been impatient to see the money out of the lodge and off the island—for when Henry, a