CHAPTER XXVIII
THE NOMAD OF THE FIRE-WHEEL
It had been an unforgettable day, this day in the pine woods. Dianehad forded shallow streams and followed bright-winged birds, lunched bya silver lake set coolly in the darkling shade of cypress and found acurious nest in the stump of a tree. Now with a mass of creepingblackberry and violets strapped to her saddle she was riding slowlyback through the pine woods.
Though the sun, which awhile back had filled the hollow of palmettofronds with a ruddy pool of light, had long since dropped behind thehorizon, the girl somehow picked the homeward trail with the unerringinstinct of a wild thing. That one may be hopelessly lost in thedeceptive flatwoods she dismissed with a laugh. The wood is kind towild things.
It was quite dark when through the trees ahead she caught the curiousglimmer of a cart wheel of flame upon the ground, hub and spokesglowing vividly in the center of a clearing. Curiously the girl rodetoward it, unaware that the picturesque fire-wheel ahead was thetypical camp fire of the southern Indian, or that the strange wildfigure squatting gravely by the fire in lonely silhouette against thewhite of a canvas-covered wagon beyond in the trees, was a vagrantSeminole from the proud old turbaned tribe who still dwell in theinaccessible morasses of the Everglades.
The realization came in a disturbed flash of interest and curiosity.Though the Florida Indian harmed no one, he still considered himselfproudly hostile to the white man. Wherefore Diane wisely wheeled herhorse about to retreat.
It was too late. Already the young Seminole was upon his feet, keen ofvision and hearing for all he seemed but a tense, still statue in thewildwood.
Accepting the situation with good grace, Diane rode fearlessly towardhis fire and reined in her horse. But the ready word of greeting frozeupon her lips. For the nomad of the fire-wheel was a girl, tall andslender, barbarically arrayed in the holiday garb of a Seminole chief.The firelight danced upon the beaten band of silver about her brilliantturban and the beads upon her sash, upon red-beaded deerskin leggingsdelicately thonged from the supple waist to the small and moccasinedfoot, upon a tunic elaborately banded in red and a belt of buckskinfrom which hung a hunting knife, a revolver and an ammunition pouch.
But Diane's fascinated gaze lingered longest upon the Indian girl'sface. Her smooth, vivid skin was nearer the hue of the sun-darkCaucasian than of the red man, and lovelier than either, with grave,vigilant eyes of dusk, a straight, small nose and firm, proud mouthvividly scarlet like the wild flame in her cheeks.
Aloof, impassive, the Indian girl stared back.
"I wish well to the beautiful daughter of white men!" she said atlength with native dignity. The contralto of her voice was full andrich and very musical, her English, deliberate and clear-cut.
Immensely relieved--for the keen glance of those dark Indian eyes hadsuddenly softened--Diane leaped impetuously from her horse; across thefire white girl and Indian maid clasped hands.
White girl and Indian maid then clasped hands.]
"Do forgive me!" she exclaimed warmly. "But I saw your fire and turnedthis way before I really knew what I was doing." Just as Diane won theconfidence of every wild thing in the forest, so now with her winsomegrace and unaffected warmth, she won the Indian girl.
Some subtle, nameless sympathy of the forest leaped like a spark fromeye to eye--then with a slow, grave smile in which there was much lessreserve, the Seminole motioned her guest to a seat by the fire.
Nothing loath, Diane promptly tethered her horse and squatted Indianfashion by the cartwheel fire, immensely thrilled and diverted by herpicturesque adventure.
"My name," she offered presently with her ready smile, "is Diane."
"Di-ane," said the Indian girl majestically. And added naively, "Shewas the Roman goddess of light--and of hunting, is it not so?"
Diane looked very blank.
"Where in the world--" she stammered, staring, and colored.
The Indian girl smiled.
"From _so_ high," she said shyly, "I have been taught by Mic-co. Likethe white student of books, I know many curious things that he hastaught me."
"And your name?" asked Diane, heroically mastering her mystifiedconfusion. "May I--may I not know that too?"
"Shock-kil-law," came the ready reply.
"That readily becomes Keela!" exclaimed Diane smiling.
The girl nodded.
"So Mic-co has said. And so indeed he calls me."
"Tell me, Keela, what does it mean?"
"Red-winged blackbird," said Keela.
It was eminently fitting, thought Diane, and glanced at Keela's hairand cheeks.
There was a wild duck roasting in the hub of coals--from the burningspokes came the smell of cedar. The Indian girl majestically broke asegment of koonti bread and proffered it to her companion. Withfaultless courtesy Diane accepted and presently partook with healthyrelish of a supper of duck and sweet potatoes.
The silence of the Indian girl was utterly without constraint.
"I wonder," begged Diane impetuously, "if you'll tell me who Mic-co is?I'm greatly interested. He taught you about Rome?"
Nodding, the Indian girl said in her quaint, deliberate English thatMic-co was her white foster father. The Seminoles called himEs-ta-chat-tee-mic-co--chief of the White Race. Most of them calledhim simply Mic-co. He was a great and good medicine man of much wisdomwho dwelt upon a fertile chain of swamp islands in the Everglades. TheIndians loved him.
Still puzzled, Diane diffidently ventured a question or two, marvelingafresh at the girl's beauty and singular costume.
"I am of no race," said Keela sombrely. "My father was a white man; mymother not all Indian; my grandfather--a Minorcan. Six moons I livewith my white foster father. And I live then as I wish--like thedaughter of white men. Six moons I dwell with the clan of my mother.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--forI am happiest in the lodge of Mic-co. Then the old chief bids metravel to the world of white men and sell." There was gentle pathos inher mellow voice.
Pieces of ancient pottery, quaint bleached bits of skeleton, beads andshells and trinkets of gold unearthed from the Florida sand mounds,moccasins and baskets, koonti starch and plumes, such were thepicturesque wares which Keela peddled when the stir of her mingledblood drove her forth from the camp of her forbears.
Diane bought generously, harnessed her saddle with clanking relics andregretfully mounted her horse.
"Let me come again to-morrow!" she begged.
"Uncah!" granted the girl in Seminole and her great black eyes werevery friendly.
Looking back as she rode through the flat-woods, Diane marveled afresh.It was a far cry indeed from the camp of a Seminole to the legends ofRome.
But the primeval flavor of the night presently dissolved in the glareof acetylenes from a long gray car standing motionless by the roadsideahead. The climbing moon shone full upon the face of a bareheadedmotorist idly smoking a cigarette and waiting.
Diane reined in her horse with a jerk and a clank of relics.
"Philip Poynter!" she exclaimed.
The driver laughed.
"I wonder," said he, "if you know what a shock you've thrown into youraunt by staying out in the flat-woods until dark. She once knew a manwho lost himself. Incidentally they are mighty deceptive to wanderabout in. The trees are so far apart that one never seems to get intothem. And then, having meanwhile effectively got in without knowingit, one never seems to get out."
"Where," demanded Diane indignantly, "did you come from anyway?"
"If you hadn't been so ambitious," Philip assured her with mildresentment, "you'd have seen me at breakfast. I arrived at Sherrill'slast night. As it is, I've been sitting here an hour or so watchingyou swap wildwood yarns with the aborigine yonder. And Ann Sherrillsent me after you in Dick's speediest car. Ho, uncle!"
> An aged negro appeared from certain shadows to which Philip had lazilyconsigned him.
"Uncle," said Philip easily, "will ride your horse back to Sherrill'sfor you. I picked him up on the road. You'll motor back with me?"
Diane certainly would not.
"Then," regretted Philip, "I'm reduced to the painful and spectacularexpedient of just grazing the heels of your fiery steed with Dick'sracer all the way back to Sherrill's and matching up his hoof-beats onthe shell-road with a devil's tattoo on the horn."
Greatly vexed, Diane resigned her horse to the waiting negro, who rodeoff into the moonlight with a noisy clank. Mr. Poynter's face wasradiant.
"And after running the chance of a night in the pine barrens," he musedadmiringly, "you amble out of the danger zone in the mostmatter-of-fact manner with your saddle clanking like a bone-yard. Idon't wonder your aunt fusses. What made the racket?"
"Bones and shells and things."
"Well, for such absolute irresponsibility as you've developed sinceyou've been out of the chastening jurisdiction of the hay-camp, I'drespectfully suggest that you marry the very first bare-headedmotorist, smoking a cigarette, whom you happened to see as you rode outof the pine-woods."
"Philip," said Diane disdainfully, "the moon--"
"Is on my head again," admitted Philip. "I know. It always gets me.We'd better motor around a bit and clear my brain out. I'd hateawfully to have the Sherrills think I'm in love."
Almost anything one could say, reflected Diane uncomfortably, inspiredPhilip's brain to fresh fertility.
The camp of Keela, domiciled indefinitely in the flat-woods to sell towinter tourists, proved a welcome outlet for the fretting gypsy tide inDiane's veins. She found the Indian girl's magnetism irresistible.
Proud, unerringly truthful, fastidious in speech and personal habit,truly majestic and generous, such was the shy woodland companion withwhom Diane chose willfully to spend her idle hours, finding the girl'sunconstrained intervals of silence, her flashes of Indian keenness, herinborn reticence and naive parade of the wealth of knowledge Mic-co hadtaught her, a most bewildering book in which there was daily somethingnew to read.
There was a keen, quick brain behind the dark and lovely eyes, afaultless knowledge of the courtesies of finer folk. Mic-co hadwrought generously and well. Only the girl's inordinate shyness andthe stern traditions of her tribe, Diane fancied, kept her chained toher life in the Glades.
Keela, strangely apart from Indian and white man, and grantedunconventional license by her tribe, hungered most for the ways of thewhite father of whom she frequently spoke.
Diane learned smoke signals and the blazing and blinding of a trail, aninexhaustible and tragic fund of tribal history which had been handeddown from mouth to mouth for generations, legends and songs, wailingdirges and native dances and snatches of the chaste and oathless speechof the Florida Indian.
"Diane, _dear_!" exclaimed Ann Sherrill one lazy morning, "what in the_world_ is that exceedingly mournful tune you're humming?"
"That," said Diane, "is the 'Song of the Great Horned Owl,' my cleverlittle Indian friend taught me. Isn't it plaintive?"
"It is!" said Ann with deep conviction. "_Entirely_ too much so. Ifeel creepy. And Nathalie says you did some picturesque dance for herand your aunt--"
"The 'Dance of the Wild Turkey,'" explained Diane, much amused at therecollection. "Aunt Agatha insisted that it was some iniquitous andcunningly disguised Seminole species of turkey trot. She was horriblyshocked and grew white as a ghost at my daring--"
"Fiddlesticks!" said Ann Sherrill. "She ought to have _all_ the shockout of her by now after bringing up you and Carl! _I'm_ going to rideout to the flat-woods with you, for I'm simply _dying_ for a newsensation. Dick's as stupid as an owl. He does nothing but hangaround the Beach Club. And Philip Poynter's tennis mad. He looks hurtif you ask him to do anything else except perhaps to trail fatuouslyafter you. It's the flat-woods for mine."
Ann returned from her visit to the Indian camp scintillant with italicsand enthusiasm.
"My dear," she said, "I'm _wild_ about her--_quite_ wild! . . . I'mgoing again and _again_! . . . If I knew _half_ as much and were_half_ as lovely-- Why, do you know, Diane, she set me right aboutsome ridiculous quotation, and I never try to get them straight, for_half_ the time I find my own way so _much_ more expressive. . . .There's Philip Poynter with a tennis racquet again! Diane, I'm losingpatience with him."
From her madcap craving for new sensation, Ann was destined to evolvean inspiration which with customary energy and Diane's interestedconnivance she swept through to fruition, unaware that Fate marched,leering, at her heels.