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Updated: June 19, 2025
Shall I stay with her in the light, or go into the dark and strike the danger out of it?" I didn't frame all this into words. It was all only an intense feeling, but the mental judgment was very real. I turned from her and cleared the doorstep at a leap, and in a moment was by O'mie's side, chasing down the hill-slope toward town.
"Phil, Phil!" she cried, "O'mie's taken a change for the better. He's been asleep for three hours, and now he is awake. He knew Aunt Candace and he asked for you. The doctor says he has a chance to live. Oh, Phil!" and Marjie burst into tears. Le Claire took her hand and, putting it through my arm, he said, gently as my father might have done, "You are both too young for such a strain as this.
Just at daybreak I woke with a start. I had not dreamed once all night, but now, wide awake, with my face to the open east window where the rose tint of a grand new day was deepening into purple on the horizon's edge, feeling and knowing everything perfectly, I saw O'mie's face before me, white and drawn with pain, but gloriously brave.
It must have slipped out when she laid the scarf beside her and sat down to make the wreath. I took the pin from O'mie's hand, my mind clear now as to what had frightened the ponies. A new anxiety grew up from that moment. The "good Indian" was passing. And yet I was young and joyously happy that day, and I did not feel the presence of danger then.
I must prove myself the thing I always meant to be. God knew the heroic spirit I needed that lonely September night. As I sat looking out toward the west the years of my boyhood came back to me, and then I remembered O'mie's words when he told me of his struggle: "It was to save a woman, Phil. He could only kill me. He wouldn't have been that good to her.
"He went racin' out draggin' somethin' after him, an' jumped over the porch railin' here," pointing to the north, "stid o' goin' down the steps. O'mie's double-geared lightin' for quickness anyhow, but last night he jist made lightnin' seem slow the way he got off the reservation an' into the street. It roused me up. I was half asleep settin' here waitin' to put them strangers to bed again.
"Tie him in and we'll pull him up." It was rough handling even with the tenderest of care, and a very dangerous feat as well. I watched those above draw up O'mie's body and I was the last to leave the cave. As I turned to go, by merest chance, my eye caught sight of a knife handle protruding from a crevice in the rock. I picked it up. It was the short knife Jean Pahusca always wore at his belt.
The records and letters of O'Meara have all been kept there. This handwriting would not stand, in court, Mapleson. The land was O'Meara's. It is now O'mie's." Mapleson sat with rigid countenance. For almost fifteen years he had matched swords with John Baronet.
I am O'mie's attorney and am trying to adjust his claims for him as I can discover them. I cannot get hold of the case myself as I should like. If Le Claire were here I might find out something." "Or nothing," I broke in. "It would depend on circumstances." "You are right. He has never told me all he knows, but I know much without his telling."
His manner, however, had that habitual dignified kindliness that bound people to him, and made them trust him even when he was pitted with all his strength against their cause. Lettie had boasted much of what she could do. She had refused all of O'mie's well-meant counsel, and she had been friends with envy and hatred so long that they had become her masters.
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