CHAPTER XV.
SOMETHING WORSE THAN A GOLD CRISIS.
“What is the matter with your friend?” asked Overton, as Lyster stood staring after Mr. Haydon, who walked alone down the way they had come from the boats. “Is one glimpse of our camp life enough to drive him to the river again?”
“No, no—that is—well, I don’t just know what ails him,” confessed Lyster, rather lamely. “He went in with me to see ’Tana, and seems all upset by the sight of her. She does look very low, Dan. At home he has a daughter about her age, who really resembles her a little—as he does—a girl he thinks the world of. Maybe that had something to do with his feelings. I don’t know, though; never imagined he was so impressionable to other people’s misfortunes. And that satanic-looking old Indian helped make things uncomfortable for him.”
“Who—Akkomi?”
“Oh, that is Akkomi, is it? The old chief who was too indisposed to receive me when I awaited admittance to his royal presence! Humph! Well, he seemed lively enough a minute ago—said something to Haydon that nearly gave him fits; and then, as if satisfied with his deviltry, he collapsed into the folds of his blanket again, and looks bland and innocent as a spring lamb at the present speaking. Is he grand chamberlain of your 195 establishment here? Or is he a medicine man you depend on to cure ’Tana?”
“Akkomi said something to Mr. Haydon?” asked Overton, incredulously. “Nonsense! It could not have been anything Haydon would understand, anyway, for Akkomi does not speak English.”
Lyster looked at him from the corner of his eyes, and whistled rather rudely.
“Now, it is not necessary for any reason whatever, for you to hide the accomplishments of your noble red friend,” he remarked. “You are either trying to gull me, or Akkomi is trying to gull you—which is it?”