For a moment the Indian did not reply; he faced her, thinking. "Maybe—" he began.
"Maybe what, Asa?"
"Somebody else have reason."
It was a good deal for Asa Redbird to say; his rôle—the rôle of an Indian remaining in a land owned and occupied by the white—was to keep free of their affairs as much as possible; to serve and observe but, so far as might be, never to interfere. Certainly never to accuse lightly. Ethel fully knew this; and she knew what Asa Redbird meant; more than that, she knew him not simply as an Indian, but as an individual,—a serious, honest man, a devout Catholic, taught in the tradition of the old Jesuits who more than two centuries ago came to Lake Huron to make converts among the Indians. Those Jesuits had made converts among the red men who had borne torture and death at the stake for their faith; and something about Asa Redbird made Ethel think of them now.
"Who—who do you mean, Asa?" she asked directly.
"Where did Merrill Kincheloe come from last night?" Redbird said.
He had made the accusation direct; and, looking at him, Ethel knew that Asa had formed his opinion, not alone from evidences which he had discovered this morning, but from previously held thoughts in regard to her grandfather. Asa had been willing to accuse him because, from among the few in the neighborhood who might have directed the doing of this thing, Asa could think of only Lucas Cullen; and the red man had observed the white, whom he had served without expressing any opinion, for twenty years.
It made her flinch again; yet with the wince traveled
