Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/394

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energy of which he was capable. "I have no right there—never had any, I see now. I haven't got any right now anywhere," he conceded brokenly, with a new accession of humility.

Chief Charlie had been overlooking this dialogue from a higher step with a sort of paternal interest, and he appeared to see in this speech of Boland's evidence of a very genuine repentance, and to be touched by it. His seamed old countenance began to beam and there was a brightening moisture in his own opaque orbs. "Salisheuttes give you land back!" he grunted, and managed a smile, beautiful in its ugliness.

"Back?" cried Mr. Boland, incredulous now that he had got the very thing he had been asking for. "Back?"

"Mebbe so, you not squash little Indian now any more—mebbe so?" speculated the old chief.

"You rebuke me, Charlie! You rebuke me utterly!" cried Mr. Boland in anguish. At the same time he disengaged one of his hands from Adam John to reach up and grasp Chief Charlie's gnarled old claw. The chief took it heartily and it was a grotesque picture that they made, John Boland, sartorially correct as ever, overcome with emotion and supported fraternally between a half-breed in overalls and an old baboon in a rusty frock coat.

"You will need to see Henry Harrington, Mr. Boland," suggested the kindly voice of the Reverend Jedediah Collins, who from his six feet of stature had also been interestedly overlooking this spectacle of the magnate before the mercy seat. "He will act for my people. They will give him a power of attorney."