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But he could not go on. A little later he went to bed and lay restless until morning. He was up again at sunrise, tramping over the island paths with Mic-co. The quiet of the early morning was rife with the chirp of countless birds, with the crackle of the camp fire where the turbaned Indians in Mic-co's service were preparing the morning meal.
Such is my life since the old chief made the compact with Mic-co. Come!" she added and led the way to the Indian wagon. "When the night-winds call," she said wistfully, "I grow restless for I am happiest in the lodge of Mic-co. Then the old chief bids me travel to the world of white men and sell." There was gentle pathos in her mellow voice.
"A singular sight!" nodded Mic-co, "and a prophetic one. Symbolic of the spirit of progress which hangs now above the Glades, is it not? The world is destined to reap much one day from the exuberant fertility of this marshland of the South." The aeroplane glided gracefully to the bosom of the lake, alighted like a great bird and came to shore with its own power.
Beyond lay the palmetto wigwams of the Indian servants who worked in the island fields of corn and rice and sugar cane, made wild cassava into flour, hunted with Mic-co and rode betimes with the island exports into civilization by the roundabout road to the south which skirted the swamp. Off to the west, in the curious chain of islands, lay the palmetto shelter of the horses.
"And brooded!" finished Mic-co quietly. "Yes," said Carl. "Always." He spoke a little bitterly of the wild inheritance of passions and arrogant intolerance with which Nature had saddled him. "All of which," reminded Mic-co soberly, "you inflamed by intemperate drinking. Is it an inherited appetite?" "It is not an appetite at all," said Carl. "You like it?"
Nodding, the Indian girl said in her quaint, deliberate English that Mic-co was her white foster father. The Seminoles called him Es-ta-chat-tee-mic-co chief of the White Race. Most of them called him simply Mic-co. He was a great and good medicine man of much wisdom who dwelt upon a fertile chain of swamp islands in the Everglades. The Indians loved him.
The peace of it all lay in Mic-co's fine, dark, tranquil face as he talked, subtly moulding another's mind in the pattern of his own. He did not preach. Mic-co smoked and talked philosophy. Carl had known but little respect for the opinions of others. He was to learn it now.
"A thing of inherent virility and vigor, intensely masculine!" said Mic-co with a smile, adding after an interval of thought, "but there is a danger in over-sexing " "I have sometimes thought so. The over-masculine man is too brutal." "And the over-feminine woman?" "Kindly, sentimental, helpless and weak. I have lived with such an aunt since I was fifteen.
I came there at his bidding his marriage to the Indian girl had been unhappy. He was homesick and this fair land of liberty had a rotten core. I struck him down and fled. You will heal and fight the Voice " Mic-co bent and raised the groveling figure. "Peace!" he said, his face very white. "We will heal and quiet the Voice forever. Come!" Gently he led the sick man away.
"Is it not enough for me that you won?" asked Keela gently and broke off, wild color staining her cheeks and forehead. Mic-co stood in the doorway. "Mic-co," she said bravely, "I I would have you tell him that he is strong and brave and clean enough to love. He he does not know it." She fled with a sob. "Have you forgotten?" asked Mic-co slowly.
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