"Your friend?"

She shook her head vigorously.

"Enemy? Kill?" Johnny's hand sought his automatic.

"No! No! No!" she fairly screamed. "Not kill!" Her hand was on his arm
with a frantic grip.

"Why?"

"No can tell. Only, not kill; not kill now. No! No! No! Mebby never!"

"Well, I'll be--" Johnny took his hand from his gun and peered over the
ledge. The man was gone. It was a dirty trick he had played. He half
wished he had not done it. And yet, the Jap girl had laughed. She knew
what the man was. She had been close enough to have stopped him, had she
thought it right. She had not done so. His conscience was clear.

They crept away in the gathering darkness, these two; and Johnny
suddenly felt for this little Jap girl a comradeship that he had not
known before. It was such a feeling as he had experienced in school
days, when he was prowling about with boy pals.

Shortly after darkness had fallen, Johnny was seated cross-legged on a
deer skin, staring gloomily at the ragged hole left by the whale harpoon
bomb. He had not yet seen Iyok-ok. He was trying now to unravel some of
the mysteries which the happenings of the day had served only to tangle
more terribly. He had not meant to kill the Russian, even though the Jap