United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Me wait," Sewatis would say, whenever the conversation touched upon this subject, and by the end of a week Walter would have felt decidedly lonely without his silent companion. "There's one thing about it," the boy said once, when the Indian had refused to leave him, "while you are here I feel as if I could learn at any time how matters are at home.
"We can dispose of this easily enough, but what shall be done with Jim is more than I can decide." Before he could drop the document from his fingers Sewatis leaped from his couch, seized the warrant, and went back to his slumbers, saying, as he did so, "Heap big rascal! me keep talkin'-skin."
"Indeed, I begin to think Samuel Haines did you a favour when he made it necessary for you to hide in this place. At the rate you have been labouring, the mill will be in working order within a month." "It would, for a certainty, if I had the necessary materials, which can only be procured with money. I truly believe Sewatis and I could do very nearly the whole of the task."
Walter leaped to his feet, searched to and fro several moments in vain, and then found a trail leading eastward across the river. Sewatis had returned to his own tribe, and with him had gone, however unwillingly, James Albert and the warrant for the young messenger's arrest.
Walter had many messages to send to his mother and Master McCleary, and if the messenger remembered them all his memory must have been prodigious. Finally, the young men crept into the lean-to where Sewatis lay, apparently sleeping, and very shortly after they had stretched themselves out on the fragrant fir boughs their eyes were closed in slumber.
"Come back and help me as you did before." "Build mill?" and the Indian touched the bag of money with his foot. "Do you mean that you won't stay unless I use that gold?" Sewatis nodded. "Suppose I did take it?" The Indian seated himself as if to show he would remain. It was fully an hour before Walter spoke again, and during that time he pondered over the matter in all its bearings.
Ten minutes after he disappeared a face peered from amid the foliage, and the odour of rum might have been detected upon the air. The sleepers were suddenly awakened by a crashing amid the underbrush, and as they leaped to their feet, awake and on the alert in an instant, Walter cried, "Look out, there! don't shoot! One of those is Sewatis; but who is he struggling with?"
His companion appeared as before the coming of Jim Albert, with a single exception, and that was at the close of the fatiguing day's work, when he pointed to a slight elevation overlooking the site of the proposed mill, and said, quietly, "Sewatis build house there." "So you shall, and between the two of us I reckon we can run the business as it should be."
It wouldn't be much of a task for you to go into Portsmouth?" Sewatis made a gesture which signified that such a journey would be as nothing. "I think you had better go and see my mother presently. Of course she won't be worrying about me, for she knows I am able to take care of myself; but at the same time it will give her some satisfaction to know what I am doing. You could find my mother?"
The Indians remained in camp during that night, and at daybreak, after a breakfast of venison, all save Sewatis departed. Never before had Walter worked as he did on the day succeeding the Indian's return. It was a perfect fever of industry, superinduced by the knowledge that there was now nothing to prevent the consummation of his desires save that which could be done by hands.
Word Of The Day