THE EURALIANS
Marty Le Gros lay sprawled on the ground. He had scarcely moved from the position in which he had fallen. Pri-loo, her handsome eyes aflame with fierce anger, was standing just within the doorway leading to the kitchen place. A man stood guard over her, a small dark-skinned creature whose eyes slanted with a suggestion of Mongol obliqueness. It was obvious that she was only held silent under threat of the gun that her guard held ready. Two other dark-skinned strangers moved about the living room clearly searching, and a third stood looking on, propped against the table which served the missionary for writing. Beyond the movements of the searching men, and such disturbance as the process of their work entailed, and the insistent cries of the child Felice in the adjoining room, an ominous silence prevailed.
The expression of the almost yellow eyes of the man at the table was intense with cold, deliberate purpose. It was without one gleam of pity for the fallen missionary. It was without concern for the angry woman held silent in the doorway. He was regarding only the movements of the men acting under his orders. He, like the man in charge of Pri-loo, was clad in the ordinary garb customary to whitemen of the northern trail. But the others, the searchers, had no such pretensions. They were in the rough clothing native to the Eskimo when Arctic summer prevails.
After awhile the terrified cries of the suddenly awakened Felice died down to the intermittent sobs which so surely claim the sympathies of the mother-heart. Even Pri-loo’s fierce native anger yielded before their appeal. Distress stirred her, and only the threatening gun held her from rushing to comfort the helpless babe who was her treasured charge.
The great prone figure of the missionary on the ground stirred. It was the preliminary to returning consciousness. Quite abruptly his head was raised. Then, by a great effort, he propped himself on to his elbow and gazed about him. Finally his dark, troubled eyes came to rest on the face of the still figure of the man who stood regarding him.
There was a searching pause while eye met eye. Then the missionary sought to moisten his lips with a tongue little less parched.
“Well?” he demanded in the low, husky voice of a man whose strength is rapidly waning.
The man at the table turned to the searchers whose task seemed complete.
“Nothing?” he said. And his tone was almost without question.
One of the searchers offered a negative gesture. There was no verbal reply.