Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/371

 "Chief Skookum Charlie! I have come to throw myself entirely on your mercy."

But he had chosen words unfortunately; the old chief swelled like a turkey about to strut.

"Mercy?" he rumbled out of the age-broken depths of his voice, and his eyes narrowed shrewdly and glittered, opaque almost as ebony, save in the very center where was a tiny yellow pit out of which shot a beam that searched and seared. "Mercy!" rumbled the chief again, withering in his scorn, "Did the white man show mercy to my son, Adam John?" Not that Adam John was any son of Skookum Charlie's or even of his tribe, but—he was an Indian.

"But, Adam John" Mr. Boland was attempting to qualify, when the old chief interrupted imperiously.

"You big! Adam John little! You s-s-squash him like toad. Now me big! Chief Skookum Charlie heap big!" The old man smote his shrunken chest proudly and his bared yellow fangs dripped venom. "You little toad," he exulted fiercely. "Me squash-h-h you—flat!"

And that was all! That was all. The Indian's wrinkled face became a thing of stone. All its lines merged in resolution so implacable that Mr. Boland felt himself for once looking into the face of a man whose will was firmer than his could be, whose nature was more terrible in its tenacity. "An Indian is a poor thinker but he has got a long memory," Scanlon had once warned him; he had not felt the force of this till now when his spirit recoiled before this sprayed venom of Chief Skookum Charlie.

Boland tried to give him look for look but couldn't