The Indian drew a deep breath. Then he nodded slowly.
“I tell him all thing,” he said simply.
“Good.”
Wilder released his knees and spread himself out on the ground, and almost ostentatiously returned his pistol to his pocket.
“Go ahead,” he said, as he propped himself on his elbow.
Usak talked at long length in his queer, broken fashion. His mind was flung back to those far-off years when the great avenging madness had taken possession of him. He told the story of Marty Le Gros from its beginning. He told the story of the man’s great hopes and strivings for the Eskimo he looked upon as children. He told of the birth of the Kid, and the ultimate death of the missionary’s wife. Then had come the time of his boss’s gold “strike,” the whereabouts of which he kept secret even from him, Usak. Then came the time of the murderous descent of the Euralians, and the killing and burning that accompanied it. And how he had returned to the Mission to find the dead remains of Pri-loo his wife, and of his good boss, Marty, and the living child flung into the wood which sheltered its home.
He told how he went mad with desire to kill, and set out to wreak his vengeance. He had long since by chance discovered where these people hid themselves in the far-off mountains, and he went there, and waited until they returned from their war trail.
Now for the first time Wilder learned all the intimate details of the terrible slaughter which this single savage had contrived to inflict. Nor did the horror of the story lose in the man’s telling. He missed nothing of it, seeming to revel in a riot of furious memory. Once or twice, as he gloated over the fall of an enemy, he reached out, and his lean hand patted the butt of his queer old rifle almost lovingly. And with the final account of his struggle with the leader himself, even Wilder shrank before the merciless joy the man displayed as he contemplated the end of the battle with the man’s sockets emptied of the tawny eyes that had gazed upon the murder of those poor, defenceless creatures the Indian had been powerless to protect.
“Oh, yes,” he said in conclusion. “Him see nothing more, never. Him have no eyes never no more. Him live, yes. I leave him woman. So I go. So I come back. I come back to the little Kid, him good boss, Marty, leave. I live. Oh, yes. I live for him Kid. I mak big work for him Kid. Big trade. So him grow lak the tree, him flower, an’ I think much for him. It all good. It mak me feel good all inside. Him to me lak the child of Pri-loo. You marry him Kid? Good. You give him gold? Good. Usak plenty happy. Now I mak him one big trip. Then no more. Then I do so as the good whiteman of him Kid say. Yes.”
The Indian spread out his hands in a final gesture. Then he drew up his knees, and clasped them tightly, while his burning eyes dwelt broodingly upon the leaping fire.