Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/77

 "I brought you in my canoe." The Indian girl's face was still demure.

She was a part of his puzzle. Slowly Henry's mind attacked the problem of what had happened since he heard that last dull explosion. "Where did you bring me from?"

"From Adam John's island—Hurricane Island, that is."

Henry's mind associated quickly. Hurricane Island! That was the island Quackenbaugh and Scanlon were arguing about on that night a thousand years ago in Boland's den. Was that, then, Adam John's island? Henry was interested in Adam John and all that pertained to him for he had crawled out into No Man's Land one night and brought Adam John back with two bullet holes in him, and while Henry was doing this he acquired a bullet hole for himself. If you have saved a man's life you feel a proprietary interest in the man ever after.

The white man's slowly clearing consciousness centered in the girl again. She was the prettiest, the demurest, the most unaffected little thing! She had dropped down before him cross-legged, within reach of his hand, as if it were the most natural thing to do, and was answering his questions in a mood of entire neighborliness, contemplating him wonderingly the while as if he were some strange gift the gods had brought to her lodge. If the Shell Point Indians were like this—well, no wonder Mr. Boland could be sentimental over them!

"You paddle a canoe?" he asked, and found himself taking her right hand and feeling of it doubtingly. Yes; it was a calloused little hand and sinewy; yet the back