Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/409

 "Well—for one thing"—he hesitated, eyes roving questioningly as his mind did—"for one thing, I am leaving here tomorrow!" he discovered suddenly.

"Leaving?" The shaken Old Two Blades almost wept. He was aghast, frightened, trembling. Horror peered out of his recessed eyes. "Why, you are the only man who can cope with the situation at all—the only man everybody trusts!" he quavered.

"Everybody? Huh!" scoffed Henry, with another bitter laugh: for the one person who hadn't trusted him made all the rest negligible. Yet the very genuineness of this tenacious old man's consternation waked something within that made Henry question wildly the justice of his own sudden resolve, so that instead of arguing with a hated enemy, he seemed to himself to be merely protesting to his own conscience, and was presently answering in hoarse desperation, eyes roving helplessly again: "I had thought I—I might cope with it—try to cope with it; but—it's not worth the—the Oh, what the hell's the use?" And a frankly harried man, harried beyond enduring, beyond caring, opened his hands in a gesture of helpless negation.

"But you're trustee for the Indians," reminded Boland, taking hope. "They sent me here to make terms with you."

Henry recalled the Salisheuttes with a start, and then with a sigh of resignation, consigned them to the discard. "They'll have to get somebody else."

"But the townspeople have put their faith in you!" argued Boland cunningly.

"They'll have to put it in somebody else," said Harrington desperately.