第8章

Nevertheless,Elijah lived two weeks on the unsubstantial memory of this meeting.What might have followed could not be known,for at the end of that time an outrage--so atrocious that even the peaceful Minyos were thrilled with savage indignation--was committed on the outskirts of the village.An old chief,who had been specially selected to deal with the Indian agent,and who kept a small trading outpost,had been killed and his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer.The murderer had coolly said that he was only "serving out"the tool of a fraudulent imposture on the Government,and that he dared the arch-impostor himself,the so-called Minyo chief,to help himself.A wave of ungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge and demanded vengeance.Elijah trembled and hesitated.In the thraldom of his selfish passion for Mrs.Dall he dared not contemplate a collision with her countrymen.He would have again sought refuge in his passive,non-committal attitude,but he knew the impersonal character of Indian retribution and compensation--a sacrifice of equal value,without reference to the culpability of the victim--and he dreaded some spontaneous outbreak.To prevent the enforced expiation of the crime by some innocent brother packer,he was obliged to give orders for the pursuit and arrest of the criminal,secretly hoping for his escape or the interposition of some circumstance to avert his punishment.A day of sullen expectancy to the old men and squaws in camp,of gloomy anxiety to Elijah alone in his lodge,followed the departure of the braves on the war-path.It was midnight when they returned.Elijah,who from his habitual reserve and the accepted etiquette of his exalted station had remained impassive in his tent,only knew from the guttural rejoicings of the squaws that the expedition had been successful and the captive was in their hands.At any other time he might have thought it an evidence of some growing scepticism of his infallibility of judgment and a diminution of respect that they did not confront him with their prisoner.But he was too glad to escape from the danger of exposure and possible arraignment of his past life by the desperate captive,even though it might not have been understood by the spectators.He reflected that the omission might have arisen from their recollection of his previous aversion to a retaliation on other prisoners.Enough that they would wait his signal for the torture and execution at sunrise the next day.

The night passed slowly.It is more than probable that the selfish and ignoble torments of the sleepless and vacillating judge were greater than those of the prisoner who dozed at the stake between his curses.Yet it was part of Elijah's fatal weakness that his kinder and more human instincts were dominated even at that moment by his lawless passion for the Indian agent's wife,and his indecision as to the fate of his captive was as much due to this preoccupation as to a selfish consideration of her relations to the result.He hated the prisoner for his infelicitous and untimely crime,yet he could not make up his mind to his death.He paced the ground before his lodge in dishonorable incertitude.The small eyes of the submissive Wachita watched him with vague solicitude.

Toward morning he was struck by a shameful inspiration.He would creep unperceived to the victim's side,unloose his bonds,and bid him fly to the Indian agency.There he was to inform Mrs.Dall that her husband's safety depended upon his absenting himself for a few days,but that she was to remain and communicate with Elijah.