an oldish voice, husky with anxiety, importuned quaveringly: "You mean, Chief Charlie, that you were joking with me? That—that you will give me my land back too?"
The old Indian started and looked offense, then surprise, then sardonic gratification. His glance was one which sifted and weighed and found utterly wanting for a time, then seemed at length to discover in the strained features before him something that might be worthy at least of deliberation—say, before a referee.
"You askum that boy!" he directed bluntly, pointing with the short stem of his pipe; and, lo, there before Mr. Boland, looking at him level, was a half-breed with sloe-black eyes and twisted, half-emerged features.
Quite possibly Old Two Blades had never seen this man before; yet he recognized him intuitively—Adam John! Yes: whether assuming a breakdown of police power or sensing that atmosphere of general amnesty which had begun to spread itself abroad, or proudly indifferent to the chance he took—however it was, here was Adam John, standing among the Salisheuttes as if naively he expected that justice would be done to him automatically when it was done to them.
As Mr. Boland gazed at his patient features, mildly curious rather than hotly resentful, a sense that he had committed an enormity upon this inarticulate half-breed grew up in him swiftly. He recalled with shame how ruthlessly the mighty mass of his power and the trained cunning of his brain had been employed to crush this one superfluous little Indian. And now before this same insignificant Siwash the issues of his fortune were made to tremble.
Adam John had become the arbiter of John Bo-
