Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/216

 house in Edgewater is surrounded by a mob clamoring for your blood. I want you, unarmed, to go back with me tonight, to walk right through that mob and surrender to Under-Sheriff Jordan. I have seen you dare death before and I want you to dare it tonight. Will you?"

The Indian's ferret eyes brightened at the challenge; but he hesitated, features working. "Me go," he announced presently.

"You must realize fully what you are doing, Adam," warned Harrington. "They call you a murderer. They say you were sore at the law and took your grudge out heartlessly on poor Jim Hogan—Jim, with a wife and six kids.

"If you come in, I want you to say to the officers that you are not a lawless person and that to prove it, you are willing to submit your cause to a jury—all the facts—just the way they appear to you. It is a very solemn thing that I ask of you, Adam, because if they decide that you are guilty, you will be sentenced to hang." Hang! How terribly the word echoed in in this little lodge where an adolescent citizen had dreamed his crude but happy dreams. "Are you up to that, old fellow—what I have proposed? Or is it too much?" Harrington's tone was affectionate and considerate.

Adam John was thoughtful; he took time to review his first acceptance. "If you say that right thing, me do it," he decided, drawing himself up proudly. Then his features began to work as if he struggled to bring to birth some inchoate, half-formed idea that motivated his actions. "Me fight once for that," he labored, pointing upward toward the peak of his lodge where