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.