a fellow human being, an equal, with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling.  Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence.  This he realised with startling suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a readjustment absolute in his attitude.  Under its influence the dissimulation of a moment ago vanished.  From out of concealment he came fair into the open.  What he knew he would reveal—­if the other wished; but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer.  With the decision he aroused.  In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit it afresh suggestively.

“I lied to you a bit ago, How,” he confessed abruptly.  “It was not Hawkins I came to see at all, but you.”

The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.

“I thought so,” it said simply.

Puff, puff went the white man’s pipe, until even though it was daylight, the glow lit up his face.

“You did me a service once,” he continued at last, “a big service—­and I’ve not forgotten.  I’ll go now, or stay, as you wish.”

Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless, smiling infinite.

“I understand.  You have something to tell me, something you think I should know.”

The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.

“I repeat, it is for you to choose.”

Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his heart beat more swiftly in anticipation.  Then at last the Indian moved.  Deliberately, noiselessly he turned.  Equally deliberately he drew a robe opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground—­his long fingers locked across his knees.

“I choose to listen,” he said.  “Tell me, please.”

For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white man filled his pipe.  The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering outside the bowl onto his knee.

“About a month ago”—­the speaker cleared his throat raspingly—­“on August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town.  It started from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor.  It wasn’t much of a funeral, either.  Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one was there.”  Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.  “It was the funeral of a child:  a child half Indian, half white.”

Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.

“Go on, please,” requested a voice.

“Early yesterday morning”—­again the narrator halted perforce, to clear his throat—­“just before I left three men went through town on their way to the same ranch.  One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man who wished to buy.  They were in a hurry.  They only stopped to water their team and to visit Red Jennings’s place.  They are at the ranch house closing the bargain now.”