The stranger, who was quite close to her, uttered a sudden gasping cry as he saw her face more clearly, and drew back from the bed.
The dark hand of the Indian caught his white wrist and held him, while with the other hand he pointed to the curls of reddish brown clustering around the girl’s pale forehead, and from them to the curls on Mr. Haydon’s own bared head. They were not so luxuriant as those of the girl, but they were of the same character, almost the same color, and the vague resemblance to something familiar by which Overton had been impressed was at once located by the old Indian the moment the stranger lifted the hat from his head.
“Sick, maybe die,” said Akkomi, in a voice that was almost a whisper—“die away from her people, away from the blood that is as her blood,” and he pointed to the blue veins on the white man’s wrist.
With an exclamation of fear and anger, Mr. Haydon flung off the Indian’s hand.
Lyster, scarce hearing the words spoken, simply thought the old fellow was drunk, and was about to interfere, when the girl, as though touched by the contest above her, turned mutteringly on the pillow and opened her unconscious eyes on the face of the stranger.
“See!” said the Indian. “She looks at you.”
“Ah! Great God!” muttered the other and staggered back out of the range of the wide-open eyes. 193
Lyster, puzzled, astonished, came forward to question his Eastern friend, who pushed past him rudely, blindly, and made his way out into the sunshine.
Akkomi looked after him with a gratified expression on his dark, wrinkled old face, and bending over the girl, he muttered in a soothing way words in the Indian tongue, as though to quiet her restlessness with Indian witchery.