“I’ll take up your case later. First I want the white man Ernest Imbrie. Which tepee is he in?”
Hooliam stared, and a peculiar grin wreathed itself around his lips. “I’ve seen no white man here,” he said. “Except myself. They call me a white man.” He spoke English without a trace of the red man’s clipped idiom.
Stonor’s glance of scorn was significant. It meant: “What are you doing in the tepees, then?”
But the other was quite unabashed. “I’ll get Myengeen for you,” he said, turning to go.
He seemed a bit too eager. Stonor laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You stay where you are.”
Meanwhile the little Kakisas had begun to appear from the tepees, the men hanging back bashfully, the women and children peering from under flaps and under the edges of the tepees, with scared eyes.
“I want Myengeen,” said Stonor to the nearest man.
All heads turned to a figure crossing the stream. Stonor waited for him, keeping an eye on Hooliam meanwhile. The individual who approached was a little larger than the average of the Kakisas; well-favoured, and with a great shock of blue-black hair hanging to his neck. He was quite sprucely dressed in store clothes. His close-set eyes and extremely short upper lip gave him a perpetual sneer. He had the walled look of a bold child caught in mischief. He came up to Stonor and offered his hand with a defiant air, saying: “How!”
Stonor shook hands with him, affecting not to notice the signs of truculence. The other Indians, encouraged by the presence of their head man, drew closer.
“I want Ernest Imbrie,” Stonor said sternly. “Where is he?”