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"Me, I don't find him that damn fuz'lawge," said the brother of Tomaso, wiping his swarthy countenance that was beaded with sweat. "That Tomaso, he has took, I bet. He brings it to you queeck when I'm through with him." He looked at Johnny expectantly. "I'm promise you it comes back all right, if perhaps Tomaso has take. Perhaps now you pay twenty-fi' dollar?"
Finally the moment came when the last mist-wreath floated up like a curtain, and there lay open the shining water, and the rocky islet it seethed about, and the vision of two boats setting forth from the two shores amid the noise of shouting thousands. It was the hour of the royal duel, when the fate-thread of a nation, beaded with human destinies, lay between the fingers of two men.
And I drew my light war-hatchet from its sheath and raised it sparkling, in salute. She laughed a little, blushed a little, and bent her dainty head to view her finery once more, examining it gravely to the last red quill sewed to the beaded toe-point. Then, still serious, she lifted her grey eyes to me: "I seem to find no words to thank you, Euan.
The sun was just peering over the rough, jagged outline of the eastward buttes, when a quick yet muffled step was heard on the major's veranda and a picturesque figure stood waiting at the door. Scout, of course, a stranger would have said at a glance, for from head to foot the man was clad in beaded buckskin, without sign of soldier garb of any kind.
He was evidently a half-breed, and his clothes denoted him to be of the poorer class a class accustomed to live by preying upon its white neighbors. He was clad in a pair of moleskin trousers, which doubtless at one time had been white, but which now were of that nondescript hue which dirt conveys. His upper garments were a beaded buckskin shirt and a battered Stetson hat.
Lidey, still in her little blue flannel nightgown, but with beaded deerskin moccasins on her tiny feet, and the golden wilfulness of her hair tied back demurely with a blue ribbon, was seated at one end of the table, her eager face half buried in a sheet of paper.
Sobered, I dressed me in my forest dress, absently lacing the hunting-shirt and tying knee-points, while the old man polished hatchet and knife and slipped them into the beaded scabbards swinging on either hip. Then I went out, noiselessly descending the stairway, and came all unawares upon the young folk and the children gathered on the sunny porch, busy with their morning tasks.
Nor did he appear properly unconscious of his remaining attire of the broad-brimmed hat, its band of rattlesnake skin; of the fringed buckskin shirt, opening gallantly across his pinched throat; of his corduroy trousers, fitting bedraggled; of his beautiful beaded moccasins. He was perfect in detail and yet he at once struck me as being too acutely aware of himself.
His jacket was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coat of some well-to-do man, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above brightly beaded moccasins. When I paused, Paul fixed his eyes on an invisible spot in the snow and ruminated. Then he hitched the baggy trousers up, pulled the red scarf, that held them to his waist, tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for me to go on.
"Now may I sit down with you for a few minutes?" Moving to make room for him beside her, Enid noticed that his thin face was heavily beaded with perspiration. His pocket handkerchief was wet and sandy, so she gave him her own, with a proprietary air. "Why, Claude, you look quite tired! Have you been over-doing? Where were you before you came here?"
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