Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/146

 "And now, if you don't mind being left alone," Lahleet suggested, "I think I must go. My canoe is on the other side of the island and my little Injuns are giving an entertainment tonight at the schoolhouse, so time presses."

"Not at all," assured Henry politely, "I'd walk across with you but" He indicated the sack of gold upon the stump. "Besides, my boat will be here at any minute."

"It's only a hop, skip and a jump for me," laughed the girl. "Good-by, Hen-ree!"

With no more premonition of tragedy than a butterfly when it flits across a field of poppies she danced away from him along the path, turned sharply to the right past where the cow was browsing, gave him one more glimpse of her bright face framed in green leaves and then disappeared in the timber.

"Where the devil is my boat?" speculated Henry, doing an imitation of Napoleon on St. Helena. "They must have stopped to fish. . . . Gee! I wonder if I've got to wait around here all day."

The man might have mused and chafed thus for two or three minutes in his loneliness when, listening for the faint chug of a motorboat, he heard instead a pistol shot and a scream from the forest at his back. The scream he recognized instantly—sharp, piercing, bloodcurdling—it was the voice of little Lahleet in some mortal terror or awful physical agony. That there were cougars on the island, that one had attacked her—this was his first formed theory, as he dashed into the forest.

It alarmed him further that the cry was not repeated.

"Lahleet! Lahleet!" he called loudly that she might