"Ugh," said Brave. "Noble red man will inscribe li'l pictures on birchbark for medicine man, while medicine man raises cain in frozen food locker. Don't get that sauce too thin this time, patriarch. I can't bear watery sauce on my lobsters."
CHAPTER II
Next morning, while Alan was still dressing and yawning, and Brave was clattering skillets in the kitchen, humming the allegro con passionato movement from "Hard Hearted Hannah the Vamp of Savannah," the door chimes bonged softly. Brave went to the spywindow, surveyed the caller, and shifted his grenade pistol to a handier position before opening the door. A stranger stood on the threshold.
"Ichabod Crane," said Brave to himself, and aloud, "Yes?"
"Ah," said the stranger, "you would be the tough egg with the unpronounceable name. Greetings, chieftain."
"How," said Brave with a straight face. "You want-um audience with great sachem?"
"That I do, Lo."
"Oh, gad," groaned the Indian, "if I hear that weary old jest once more I'll burst into tears and die. Come in, comedian. Dr. Rackham's dressing."
"Thanks. Forgive me for the godawful gag, friend. I haven't eaten breakfast yet and an empty stomach plays the devil with my sense of humor." He rattled over to a chair and sat down. At least, thought Brave, closing the door, you expected him to rattle. He was the longest and thinnest bag of bones ever seen on Long Island. Fully six feet eight, he was lean from the top of his narrow skull, which was covered by an inch-long mat of straight stiff blond hair, to the soles of his number twelve feet. If he had any fat in him at all it must have been a very lonesome blob of fat indeed, well camouflaged and utterly alone in a wilderness of stringy muscle, meager sinew, and shaving-slender bones. His green eyes, perpetually half-lidded on either side of a nose like the prow of a Chinese junk, were humorous and sharp and as bright as polished emeralds.