Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/368

 "All same your tepees," encouraged the sergeant; and with a large gesture bade them take possession, then marked with satisfied eye while one of his sentries took up his march between them and the gaping crowd.

"Make yourselves comfortable, brethren," said the Reverend Jedediah to Chief Skookum Charlie, the ancient and time-withered chief of the Salisheuttes and the ruling elder of that congregation into which this missionary's spiritual labors had wrought these people. "I will go in and consult the young white chief."

He went into the courthouse and inquired his way to the jail. For there had been Salisheutte boys also in Henry Harrington's platoon, and this tribe had learned through them to trust Henry Harrington as they trusted no other white man save only Jedediah Collins; and it was a rock-rooted, storm-proof trust, entirely unaffected by such trifles as had turned the populace of Edgewater to frothing at the mouth against its former idol.

With their pastor departed, Chief Skookum Charlie squatted upon his heels on the lawn, with his six cochiefs dropping to their haunches round him. Chief Charlie lighted his pipe, a stubby, unbcautiful affair with a huge bowl and a thick stem from which old Charlie sucked contentment at so short a range that the tips of his eyelashes must have been singed had not time already denuded his lids of such a valance. His colleagues produced pipes also; some modern as the corner cigar store purveys, some as native and aged as themselves.

Rumor of the arrival of the Salisheuttes came quickly to John Boland, brooding in his den upon the hill. He started at the news. The inevitable had come nearer