The Indian Drum by William MacHarg (classic english novels txt) 📕

different ways, in what strange, diverse manifestations that single circumstance had spread to those people whom Alan had interviewed! No two of them had been affected alike, he reckoned, as he went over his notes of them. Now he was going to trace those consequences to another. To what sort of place would it bring him to-day and what would he find there? He knew only that it would be quite distinct from the rest.

The driver beside whom he sat on the front seat of the little automobile was an Indian; an Indian woman and two round-faced silent children occupied the seat behind. He had met these people in the early morning on the road, bound, he discovered, to the annual camp meeting of the Methodist Indians at Northport. They were going his way, and they knew the man of whom he was in search; so he had hired a ride of them. The region through which they were traveling now was of farms, but interspersed with desolate, waste fields where blackened stumps and rotting windfalls remained after the work of the lumberers. The hills and many of the hollows were wooded; there were even places where lumbering was still going on. To his left across the water, the twin Manitous broke the horizon, high and round and blue with haze. To his right, from the higher hilltops, he caught glimpses of Grand Traverse and of the shores to the north, rising higher, dimmer, and more blue, where they broke for Little Traverse and where Constance Sherrill was, two hours away across the water; but he had shut his mind to that thought.

The driver turned now into a rougher road, bearing more to the east.

They passed people more frequently now—groups in farm wagons, or groups or single individuals, walking beside the road. All were going in the same direction as themselves, and nearly all were Indians, drab dressed figures attired obviously in their best clothes. Some walked barefoot, carrying new shoes in their hands, evidently to preserve them from the dust. They saluted gravely Alan's driver, who returned their salutes—"B'jou!" "B'jou!"

Traveling eastward, they had lost sight of Lake Michigan; and suddenly the wrinkled blueness of Grand Traverse appeared quite close to them. The driver turned aside from the road across a cleared field where ruts showed the passing of many previous vehicles; crossing this, they entered the woods. Little fires for cooking burned all about them, and nearer were parked an immense number of farm wagons and buggies, with horses unharnessed and munching grain. Alan's guide found a place among these for his automobile, and they got out and went forward on foot. All about them, seated upon the moss or walking about, were Indians, family groups among which children played. A platform had been built under the trees; on it some thirty Indians, all men, sat in straight-backed chairs; in front of and to the sides of the platform, an audience of several hundred occupied benches, and around the borders of the meeting others were gathered, merely observing. A very old Indian, with inordinately wrinkled skin and dressed in a frock coat, was addressing these people from the platform in the Indian tongue.

Alan halted beside his guide. He saw among the drab-clad figures looking on, the brighter dresses and sport coats of summer visitors who had come to watch. The figure of a girl among these caught his attention, and he started; then swiftly he told himself that it was only his thinking of Constance Sherrill that made him believe this was she. But now she had seen him; she paled, then as quickly flushed, and leaving the group she had been with, came toward him.

He had no choice now whether he would avoid her or not; and his happiness at seeing her held him stupid, watching her. Her eyes were very bright and with something more than friendly greeting; there was happiness in them too. His throat shut together as he recognized this, and his hand closed warmly over the small, trembling hand which she put out to him. All his conscious thought was lost for the moment in the mere realization of her presence; he stood, holding her hand, oblivious that there were people looking; she too seemed careless of that. Then she whitened again and withdrew her hand; she seemed slightly confused. He was confused as well; it was not like this that he had meant to greet her; he caught himself together.

Cap in hand, he stood beside her, trying to look and to feel as any ordinary acquaintance of hers would have looked.

CHAPTER XIV THE OWNER OF THE WATCH

"So they got word to you!" Constance exclaimed; she seemed still confused. "Oh, no—of course they couldn't have done that! They've hardly got my letter yet."

"Your letter?" Alan asked.

"I wrote to Blue Rapids," she explained. "Some things came—they were sent to me. Some things of Uncle Benny's which were meant for you instead of me."

"You mean you've heard from him?"

"No—not that."

"What things, Miss Sherrill?"

"A watch of his and some coins and—a ring." She did not explain the significance of those things, and he could not tell from her mere enumeration of them and without seeing them that they furnished proof that his father was dead. She could not inform him of that, she felt, just here and now.

"I'll tell you about that later. You—you were coming to Harbor Point to see us?"

He colored. "I'm afraid not. I got as near as this to you because there is a man—an Indian—I have to see."

"An Indian? What is his name? You see, I know quite a lot of them."

"Jo Papo."

She shook her head. "No; I don't know him."

She had drawn him a little away from the crowd about the meeting. His blood was beating hard with recognition of her manner toward him. Whatever he was, whatever the disgrace might be that his father had left to him, she was still resolute to share in it. He had known she would be so. She found a spot where the moss was covered with dry pine needles and sat down upon the ground.

"Sit down," she invited; "I want you to tell me what you have been doing."

"I've been on the boats." He dropped down upon the moss beside her. "It's a—wonderful business, Miss Sherrill; I'll never be able to go away from the water again. I've been working rather hard at my new profession—studying it, I mean. Until yesterday I was a not very highly honored member of the crew of the package freighter Oscoda; I left her at Frankfort and came up here."

"Is Wassaquam with you?"

"He wasn't on the Oscoda; but he was with me at first. Now, I believe, he has gone back to his own people—to Middle Village."

"You mean you've been looking for Mr. Corvet in that way?"

"Not exactly that." He hesitated; but he could see no reason for not telling what he had been doing. He had not so much hidden from her and her father what he had found in Benjamin Corvet's house; rather, he had refrained from mentioning it in his notes to them when he left Chicago because he had thought that the lists would lead to an immediate explanation; they had not led to that, but only to a suggestion, indefinite as jet. He had known that, if his search finally developed nothing more than it had, he must at last consult Sherrill and get Sherrill's aid.

"We found some writing, Miss Sherrill," he said, "in the house on Astor Street that night after Luke came."

"What writing?"

He took the lists from his pocket and showed them to her. She separated and looked through the sheets and read the names written in the same hand that had written the directions upon the slip of paper that came to her four days before, with the things from Uncle Benny's pockets.

"My father had kept these very secretly," he explained. "He had them hidden. Wassaquam knew where they were, and that night after Luke was dead and you had gone home, he gave them to me."

"After I had gone home? Henry went back to see you that night; he had said he was going back, and afterwards I asked him, and he told me he had seen you again. Did you show him these?"

"He saw them—yes."

"He was there when Wassaquam showed you where they were?"

"Yes."

A little line deepened between her brows, and she sat thoughtful.

"So you have been going about seeing these people," she said. "What have you found out?"

"Nothing definite at all. None of them knew my father; they were only amazed to find that any one in Chicago had known their names."

She got up suddenly. "You don't mind if I am with you when you talk with this Indian?"

He arose and looked around for the guide who had brought him. His guide had been standing near, evidently waiting until Alan's attention was turned his way; he gestured now toward a man, a woman, and several children who were lunching, seated about a basket on the ground. The man—thin, patient and of medium size—was of the indefinite age of the Indian, neither young nor yet old. It was evident that life had been hard for the man; he looked worn and undernourished; his clothing was the cast-off suit of some one much larger which had been inexpertly altered to make it fit him. As Alan and Constance approached them, the group turned on them their dark, inexpressive eyes, and the woman got up, but the man remained seated on the ground.

"I'm looking for Jo Papo," Alan explained.

"What you want?" the squaw asked. "You got work?" The words were pronounced with difficulty and evidently composed most of her English vocabulary.

"I want to see him, that's all." Alan turned to the man. "You're Jo Papo, aren't you?"

The Indian assented by an almost imperceptible nod.

"You used to live near Escanaba, didn't you?"

Jo Papo considered before replying; either his scrutiny of Alan reassured him, or he recalled nothing having to do with his residence near Escanaba which disturbed him. "Yes; once," he said.

"Your father was Azen Papo?"

"He's dead," the Indian replied. "Not my father, anyway. Grandfather. What about him?"

"That's what I want to ask you," Alan said. "When did he die and how?"

Jo Papo got up and stood leaning his back against a tree. So far from being one who was merely curious about Indians, this stranger perhaps was coming about an Indian claim—to give money maybe for injustices done in the past.

"My grandfather die fifteen years ago," he informed them. "From cough, I think."

"Where was that?" Alan asked.

"Escanaba—near there."

"What did he do?"

"Take people to shoot deer—fish—a guide. I think he plant a little too."

"He didn't work on the boats?"

"No; my father, he work on the boats."

"What was his name?"

"Like me; Jo Papo too. He's dead."

"What is your Indian name?"

"Flying Eagle."

"What boats did your father work on?"

"Many boats."

"What did he do?"

"Deck hand."

"What boat did he work on last?"

"Last? How do I know? He went away one year and didn't come back? I suppose he was drowned from a boat."

"What year was that?"

"I was little then; I do not know."

"How old were you?"

"Maybe eight years; maybe nine or ten."

"How old are you now?"

"Thirty, maybe."

"Did you ever hear of Benjamin Corvet?"

"Who?"

"Benjamin Corvet."

"No."

Alan turned to Constance; she had been listening intently, but she made no comment. "That is all, then," he said to Papo; "if I find out anything to your advantage, I'll let you know." He had aroused, he understood, expectations of benefit in these poor Indians. Something rose in Alan's throat and choked him. Those of whom Benjamin Corvet had so laboriously kept trace were, very many of them, of the sort of these Indians; that they had never heard of Benjamin Corvet was not more significant than that they were people of whose existence Benjamin Corvet could not have been expected to be aware. What conceivable bond could there have been between Alan's father and such poor