'I am afraid of him, afraid for you, for myself, for Willie,' she said in a low voice.
'Some of your legends,' he answered roughly. 'You blacks are all alike, half-brutal, half-beast.'
She shrank from him. They were the hardest words he had ever said to her.
'I'm sorry, Sal. I forgot myself. Tell me what you mean.'
'You know the legend of our tribe,' she said. 'No white man's blood shall mingle with our own unless calamity—I was taught that word—befall us.'
'Tell me the story, I forget it,' said Jim, as he sat down.
'This is as it was told to me by King Charlie, the chief of our tribe. He rose from his meal and stood up alone, solemn, in the moonlight.'
Sal had posed for this effect, and Jim took it all in—but it was a genuine pose, which is not the case with poseurs of the present day.
'He had eaten kangaroo and wallaby, and had supped well. You have seen King Charlie. True, he is only a black, but he has not the white man's curse upon him.'
Jim Dennis knew Sal in these moods, when the savage was uppermost.