They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.

“Well, where’s your game?” he queried at last.  “There seemed to be enough around when I came.”

The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.

“I wasn’t hunting,” he said.  “I was merely watching.”

A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he dismounted.

“I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business,” he digressed abruptly, “and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before I went back I’d look you up.”  The man was not accustomed to dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely.  “If you don’t mind I’ll go inside and smoke a bit.”

In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the flap.  There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.

“I’m very glad to see you,” he said then simply.

Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow.  Even then, however, he did not speak.  That which had been on his mind trembled now at the tip of his tongue.  The one for whose ear the information was intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed.  With the suddenness of a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before.  The message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had begun the alteration.  A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony.  The sight of the man himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the impression.  He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied, well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him at all.  Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be.  That in a measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this, that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white he had ignored.  Before he had been merely a puppet:  the play actor of an inferior, conquered race.  Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice, with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man’s sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence calculated to mete out retribution.  That an irresponsible, relentless savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken for granted, and builded thereon.  Now with disconcerting finality he realised the thing he was doing.  It was not a mere agent of divine punishment he was calling to action; but