h the
Indian agent, and who kept a small trading outpost, had been killed
and his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer. The murderer had
coolly said that he was only "serving out" the tool of a fraudulent
imposture on the Government, and that he dared the arch-impostor
himself, the so-called Minyo chief, to help himself. A wave of
ungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge and
demanded vengeance. Elijah trembled and hesitated. In the thraldom of
his selfish passion for Mrs. Dall he dared not contemplate a collision
with her countrymen. He would have again sought refuge in his passive,
non-committal attitude, but he knew the impersonal character of Indian
retribution and compensation--a sacrifice of equal value, without
reference to the culpability of the victim--and he dreaded some
spontaneous outbreak. To prevent the enforced expiation of the crime
by some innocent brother packer, he was obliged to give orders for the
pursuit and arrest of the criminal, secretly hoping for his escape or
the interposition of some circumstance to avert his punishment. A day of
sullen expectancy to the old men and squaws in camp, of gloomy anxiety
to Elijah alone in his lodge, followed the departure of the braves on
the war-path. It was midnight when they returned. Elijah, who from his
habitual reserve and the accepted etiquette of his exalted station had
remained impassive in his tent, only knew from the guttural rejoicings
of the squaws that the expedition had been successful and the captive
was in their hands. At any other time he might have thought it an
evidence of some growing scepticism of his infallibility of judgment
and a diminution of respect that they did not confront him with their
prisoner. But he was too glad to escape from the danger of exposure and
possible arraignment of his past life by the desperate captive, even
though it might not have been understood by the spectators. He reflected
that the omission might have arisen from their recollection of his
previous aversion to a retaliation on other prisoners. Enough that they
would wait his signal for the torture and execution at sunrise the next
day.

The night passed slowly. It is more than probable that the selfish and
ignoble torments of the sleepless and vacillating judge were greater
than those of the prisoner who dozed at the stake between his curses.
Yet it was part of Elijah's fatal weakness that his kinder and more
human instinct