The fight was on.  There were a dozen natives in the room.  A brawny buck with a livid scar on his right cheek lunged at Johnny.  He speedily joined his friend in oblivion.  A third man leaped upon Johnny’s back.  Johnny went over like a bucking pony.  Finally landing feet first upon the other’s abdomen, he left him to groan for breath.  A little fellow sprang at him.  Johnny opened his hand and slapped him nearly through the skin wall.  They came; they went; until at last, very much surprised and quite satisfied, they allowed Johnny to cut the skin rope and help his old blind friend down.

A boy poked his head in at the flap.  He had been a whaler and could speak English.  He surveyed the room in silence for a moment, taking in each prostrate native.

“Now you have spoiled it,” he told Johnny with a smile.

“I should say myself that I’d messed things up a bit,” Johnny admitted, “but tell me what it’s all about.  What did the poor old cuss do?”

“Do?” the boy looked puzzled.  “That one do?”

“Sure.  What did they want to hang him for?  He was too old and feeble to do anything very terrible; besides he’s blind.”

“Oh,” said the boy smiling again.  “He done not anything.  Too old, that why.  No work.  All time eat.  Better dead.  That way think all my people.  All time that way.”

Johnny looked at him in astonishment, then he said slowly: 

“I guess I get you.  In this commune, this tribe of yours, everyone does the best he can for the gang.  When he is too old to work, fish or hunt, the best thing he can do is die, so you hang him.  Am I right?”

“Sure a thing,” replied the boy.  “That’s just it.”

Johnny shot back: 

“No enjoying a ripe old age in this commune business?”

“No.  Oh, no.”

“Then I’m off this commune stuff forever,” exclaimed Johnny.  “The old order of things like we got back in the States is good enough for me.  And, I guess it’s not so old after all.  It’s about the newest thing there is.  This commune business belongs back in the stone age when primitive tribes were all the organizations there were.”

He had addressed this speech to no one in particular.  He now turned to the boy, a black frown on his brow.

“See here,” he said sharply, “this man, no die, See?  Live.  See?  All time live, see?  No kill.  You tell those guys that.  Tell them I mebby come back one winter, one summer.  Come back.  Old man dead.  I kill three of them.  See?”

Johnny took out his automatic and played with it longingly.

“Tell them if they don’t act as if they mean to do what I say, I’ll shoot them now, three of them.”

The boy interpreted this speech.  Some of the men turned pale beneath their brown skins; some shifted uneasily.  They all answered quickly.

“They say, all right,” the boy explained solemnly.  “Say that one, if had known you so very much like old man, no want-a hang that one.”