II
Josephine Stone was startled from her reverie by the parting of the shrubbery down by the island shore. Five tall, powerful-looking Indians sprang into view.
In the lead was a ghastly figure—the Indian Medicine Man who had so startled her in the trail yesterday.
A face more sinister than his would be difficult to conceive. Dark, almost to the blackness of an African, his features bespoke evil cunning and a sense of power that was made the more disconcerting by the livid red gashes on the cheek-bones and by the brilliant jet-black eyes around which the whites showed garishly. Straight, lank black hair fell to his shoulders, where row upon row of glistening white wolves’ teeth were arrayed. He wore no head adornment save a single eagle’s feather stuck in a band of purple at the back of his head.
“Henry!” Josephine Stone called to her Indian man-of-all-work. The latter and his sister came out of the house and took places by her side, but she could see they were quaking with fear.
The quintette from the woods came to an abrupt halt before them. For the moment Josephine Stone felt reassured on noting they carried no arms. The weird figure in the foreground bowed low, while his four companions stood motionless as carved statues.
“Wonderful white lady,” he addressed her in low, guttural tones whose enunciation was perfect. “Ogima Bush, the Medicine Man, brings this message: It is the will of Ogima’s master that the white lady go from here.”
In her trepidation and bewilderment, Josephine Stone could scarcely find words to reply. “I do not understand,” she faltered. “Am I—ordered off this island?”
The Medicine Man bowed again. “It is the will of Ogima’s master,” he repeated. “The white lady is to go from here with Ogima. No harm will come to her.”
His eyes flamed upon Henry and his sister standing by her side, as he addressed them sharply; commands in the Objibiway tongue that were like flying knife-blades.
Like galvanised automatons, Miss Stone’s servants moved away and marched down to the waterfront.
Their treacherous behaviour brought out the spirit of the girl. For the moment, in her disgust, she forgot her own perilous predicament. “Cowards!” she cried after them, “to be frightened by a cheap fakir.
“As for you,” and she turned her flashing eyes upon the Medicine Man, “go back and tell your master the white lady says he can go—to the devil!”
White with anger she swayed, a beautiful figure of defiance—a fragile white woman, alone, mocking a powerful savage. The Medicine Man’s head went up, his black eyes gleaming admiration—and something else, something that burned into her very soul in its ravishing masterfulness. His lips parted and from them came a sibilant gasp.
Next instant he stepped forward; a swift, panther-like movement. She sprang out of his grasp and swift as light sped back through the cottage door. From a handbag just inside she snatched out a small automatic.
She whirled the pistol into his face. “Now, you get out of here,” she cried, “or I’ll—shoot to kill!”
Ogima Bush paused. But instead of leaping back, he drew himself to his full height and calmly folded his arms, the faintest traces of a smile about his mouth as he looked down into the muzzle of the deadly little gun. “If wonderful white lady shoot,” he said calmly, “she see a man die.”
In that moment, for all his wicked hideousness, the Indian was magnificent. He was facing death, gambling on a one remote chance that she could not thus deliberately slay him.
Josephine Stone hesitated, her finger trembling at the trigger. She never exactly knew how it happened so quickly, but in the winking of an eye the red man’s left hand flew out and closed over her wrist and fingers. The automatic spat harmlessly past his cheek out into the open and was flung from her hand to the floor. She felt herself whisked from her feet as lightly as if she had been a child. She scratched and tore at his face and throat impotently as he leaped through the doorway and raced across the island to the beach.
Josephine Stone screamed and screamed again. He made no attempt to stop her; his low, mocking laugh was her only answer. But over his shoulder she saw that her cries had had the desired result. Five mounted policemen standing in astonishment by their tent on the hill up the lakeshore sprang forward and tore down toward the island.
Ogima Bush with his burden stepped into the stern of a big rowboat, and at his command two of his husky bucks bent over the oars and made the craft fairly shoot across the intervening gap to the mainland. The others of the party had apparently crossed previously.
The bow of the boat was barely beached when Ogima Bush leaped out into the shallow water with the girl. As if by magic the Indian oarsmen disappeared into the curtain of the woods. The Medicine Man followed, tearing through the trees and dense growth as swiftly and skillfully as a flying moose, at the same time protecting her so that not even a branch scratched against her face or caught in her garments.
Far behind she could occasionally catch sounds of the floundering efforts of the pursuing policemen. Twice she tried to cry out to attract their attention, but all her strength seemed to have left her and it was all she could do to ward off a swoon. He seemed to carry her with as great ease as he might a babe, and she had to admit to herself with a certain deference and respect.
The crashings of the policemen through the bush behind them grew fainter and fainter and finally were lost in the distance.
Presently Ogima Bush stepped out upon a winding man-wide trail. He stood listening a moment, then gave vent to three calls like a crow. An answering “caw, caw, caw” came from the right just ahead. The Medicine Man plunged forward.
Another turn brought them to what was to Josephine Stone more familiar territory. They were on the trail that led across Solomon Creek to the foot of the cliffs of Nannabijou. She saw that they had come by a more difficult but much shorter route than the one by which she and Louis Hammond had come up the day previous. At the approach to the creek bridge four Indians stepped out each holding a handle of a crude sedan built of poles and cedar boughs. Muttering low commands in the Objibiway tongue, the Medicine Man placed Josephine Stone on the cross-seat fashioned between the two main poles. The girl recognised the folly of offering further resistance to her captors; her only resource now, she knew, was to await a strategic moment for escape. At a grunt from Ogima Bush the carriers plunged forward and across the bridge with their burden, the Medicine Man striding behind them.
The young woman experienced a distinct sense of relief at being free from the encircling arms of the grisly Indian. She now had opportunity of scrutinising the four carriers. They were not any of them the same Indians as those who had accompanied the Medicine Man to her cottage. Each of these men wore a single eagle’s feather in his hair, similar to the one affected by the Medicine Man. The girl remembered that the single feather was the insignia of chiefship and that no red man save a witch doctor or headman of the tribe dared venture into the zone of the Cup of Nannabijou, whose black cliffs frowned menacingly upon her from above.