Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/215

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him more truly than he read himself. She thought, too, that by her maneuver of leaving the fate of the Shell Point Indians in his hands entirely, she saved him as well as them, by raising an issue so acute that it was bound to make clear to his conscience the wickedness of John Boland.

His appearance here and now she took as confirmation of her faith; she construed it at once as friendly, and after her naive fashion met him entirely without restraint or any sense of the necessity of apology or explanation.

"Is the sheriff dead?" she asked anxiously, laying hold upon Henry's arm.

"Yes," Harrington answered sorrowfully. "Take me to Adam John, will you?"

When Harrington found Adam John, he was in the lodge, standing beside the table on which lamplight struggled through a smoking chimney. A rifle lay where once the golden twentics had glittered. The Indian was at attention; but the expression of that absurdly twisted and pasty yellow face with its features only half emerged, was stolid, obstinate and a little defiant. "Adam—Adam John!" reproached Harrington, with a lump in his throat. "You have killed Sheriff Hogan."

The Indian swallowed, after which a sigh escaped him, as of relief at a suspense that had been ended. Then he sulked: "Sheriff shoot first."

"But that was an accident—a shot in the air. You made an awful mistake, Adam John. They're calling you a Bolshevik, an anarchist. They say you are a coward to shoot a man from ambush. I know that you are not a coward. I want you to prove it. The court-