“Aren’t afraid, are you?” the girl laughed. It was a rich, free, melodious laugh. “Nobody’s goin’ to hurt you in this wilderness. C’mon!”
She led the way over the trail which Johnny on his journey to the creek for water had made. The boy followed, reluctantly, and the Carib woman waddled along behind. More than once the girl paused to examine with a practiced eye patches of grass that lay flat down as if some wild creature had slept there. These were the spots where Johnny had fallen and found himself too weak to rise at once.
A little cry of dismay escaped the girl’s lips as her eyes fell upon the white-faced, prostrate form on the decaying mats.
“Dead!” her lips framed the word she did not speak. Death to this girl who knew so much of life, and loved it so, was a terrifying thing, thrice terrible in the heart of a wilderness. Yet here was a boy, a boy of her own race, who, to all appearances, had died here alone in this abandoned hut.
“Dead!” she whispered. “How—how awful!”
Some little lizards scampered over the dry palm leaves as her foot stirred the dust at the door. In another moment she was bending over the prostrate form.
“You—you can’t always tell.” There was a note of hope in her tone. “Rod, bring some water, quick.”
During the dragging moments of her brother’s absence she studied the prostrate boy’s face. There are lines in one’s face which to the keen observer tells the story of his life. Has he been kind and thoughtful of others? Has he lived brave and clean? It is written there. Has he been harsh, impatient, careless, dissipated even in small ways? This, too, is recorded there. As the girl read the story of Johnny’s life she found herself hoping more and more that she might save him.
“Give it to me,” she whispered as her brother appeared with the canteen.
With trembling fingers she placed the mouth of the canteen to the boy’s lips.