“Well!” There was a wealth of biting sarcasm in the girl’s tones. “Then who is Ogima’s boss, pray?”
“Ogima’s boss same boss as Big Boss—same boss as Mister Smid.” The Indian was looking straight down into her eyes. His wicked black optics softened in a flash that transformed him, transfixed her with its intensity.
He placed his right hand over his left breast as he said it in tones scarcely above a sibilant whisper: “_Ogima’s boss is J.C.X._”
With another low bow, the Medicine Man whirled on a shoe-packed heel and strode swiftly away up the walk in the direction of the water-locked gate of the Cup of Nannabijou.
A few minutes later the girl heard the gong in the cliffs announce his departure.
WHEN Louis Hammond went away from the City Club after his conference with Norman T. Gildersleeve he was convinced of two things. The one was that Gildersleeve had not told him the entire truth. There had been a furtiveness about the demeanour of Gildersleeve that irritated Hammond: furthermore, there had been the acknowledged duplicity of Winch in passing himself off as a United States consul, not to mention Gildersleeve’s veiled insinuations as to Josephine Stone’s connection with the North Star. To Hammond’s way of thinking, these and other elements of Gildersleeve’s methods did not “hang” very well. The other conviction was that the North Star people had been cognizant of Gildersleeve’s plans from the very first. There was now no doubt, in view of what had happened, that Acey Smith, the pulp camp superintendent, suspected, or perhaps knew definitely, from the night he landed that he, Hammond, was identified with Gildersleeve and had been sent out to the limits for the purpose of aiding in balking the North Star’s plans. That being so, either Acey Smith had his own hidden objects in view in allowing Hammond the freedom of the camp, or else—well, Hammond rather scouted the idea that the Argus-eyed master of the Nannabijou Limits considered him a nonentity in this conflict of wits who wasn’t worth troubling his head about. It couldn’t be that, he surmised, because Smith was not the type to overlook any possibilities of interference with his plans. The deeper motive that he might have had in view eluded Hammond’s shrewdest deductions. Out in the woods Acey Smith was playing at his own game, and more experienced men than Hammond had failed to fathom him. Even those most closely associated with him admitted they never intimately understood this most inaccessible man of moods.