United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Pieces of ancient pottery, quaint bleached bits of skeleton, beads and shells and trinkets of gold unearthed from the Florida sand mounds, moccasins and baskets, koonti starch and plumes, such were the picturesque wares which Keela peddled when the stir of her mingled blood drove her forth from the camp of her forbears.

He broke off frowning and spoke of the alarming mine of inherited instincts from the white father which his teaching had awakened. Keela had been restless and unhappy, fastidiously aloof with the Seminoles, shy and reticent with white men. He must not make another mistake, he said, for Keela was very dear to him. "The white father?" asked Carl curiously. "An artist."

Let us go somewhere anywhere and leave this treacherous world of civilization behind us. I I am tired of it all." Keela stared. "Very well," she said sedately a little later. "You and I, Diane, we will journey to my home in the Glades. There as it was a century back so it is now."

My people love not the white man." "But " stammered Diane. "They will think," explained Keela shyly, "that you are a beautiful daughter of the sun from the wilderness of O-kee-fee-ne-kee. You are brown and beautiful. Such, they tell, was my grandmother.

There were times when a great peace dwarfed the memory of the moon above the marsh; there were times when the thought of Ronador and Philip sent her riding wildly across the plains with Keela; there were still other times when a nameless disquiet welled up within her, some furtive distrust of the gypsy wildness of her blood. But in the main the days were quiet and peaceful.

He went straight to the heart of his subject and as a precaution against eavesdropping he put his meaning into the best English he knew. "José, she's dam-mad on Señor Jack," he began eagerly. "She's hear talk lak she's no good vaquero. Me, I hear San Vincente vaqueros talk, and Manuel she's hear also and run queeck for tella José. José she's lak for keela Señor Jack.

Like the stricken moose who seeks to press his wound against the earth, he drove the arrow home to his heart. He sobbed, and choked and lay very still, a scarlet wound dying his flannel shirt. Carl's horrified eyes turned slowly to the west. Keela was coming through the trees, proud eyes fierce with terrible anger; halting beside the dead man, she spurned him with moccasined foot.

Immeasurably delighted, Keela laughed. "You are very funny," she said in English. "I shall like you." "That's really very comfortable!" said Philip gratefully. "I don't deserve it." He held forth the bow and arrows. "See if you can shoot fast and far enough to have six arrows in the air at once," he said, smiling, "and I'll believe I'm forgiven."

Brown and lovely his cousin's face rose before him in a willful moment of tenderness and then from the shadows came again the flash of topaz and Venetian lamps and the lovely face of Keela. Something in Carl's haunted brain snapped.

With lightning-like grace Keela shot the arrows into the air and smiled. "Great Scott!" exclaimed Philip admiringly. "Seven!" With deft fingers she strung the bow again and shot, her cheeks as vivid as a wild flower, her poise and skill faultless. "Eight!" said Philip incredulously. "Help!" "Keela is easily the best shot I ever knew," exclaimed Diane warmly. "Try it, Philip."