me. His gayety was irrepressible, his high spirits unflagging. When the others rode silent in the lifeless hours of the afternoon or drooped in the midday heats, Zavier, a dust-clouded outline on

lifornia with them and sing a verse each day, he thought there would still be some left over to give away when he got there. Susan learned the first two stanzas, and Lucy picked up the air and a few words. When the shadows began to slant and the crisp breath of the mount

chemin j'a

lières bie

on lari

on lari

alières bi

eval, l'au

n, larid

n larid

he was diablement épris with Lucy. This was regarded as one of the best of Zavier's jokes. He himself laughed at it, and his extravagant compliments and gallan

bout some things. Zavier's a man just the same as the others, and Lucy's a nice-looking girl when she gets rested u

only a few Indian things about him, his dark skin and something high and f

a man with no name hanging round. I've no doubt he was born in a lodge or under a pine tree. What right's that ki

his hopeless passion. He was to leave the train near South Pass and go back into the mountains, and there, alone, camp on the streams that drained the Powder River country. In all probability he would never see one of them again. His trapping did not take him West to the great deserts, and he hated

e him again," she said, looking for sig

n complaining to her friend o

er men in the world,"

t her responsibilities as a coming proprietor. The woman's passio

the mountains and may be killed by the Indians. Don't you feel any pity fo

f superior wisdom, of an advantage over the

face

"Doesn't everyone in the train keep saying that every ten m

in the fort who were all white. Just because he had a Crow mother it seems unjust that he should be so sort of on t

wagons had crawled through a loose alkaline soil and over myriads of crickets that crushed sickeningly under the wheels. Both girls w

e meat. "It's a lot to have some one fill the kettles for you and help you get the firewood, and whe

. She expressed the normal, feminine point of view that her friend had been lo

you can't

ry every Indian that makes eyes at me? All the men in th

made eyes at her. It was rather grasping of Lucy to take it all to herself

n horses that get lame every other day, and then you have to walk. I don't mind living in a tent. I like it. But I hate always going on, never having a minute to rest, getting up in the morning when I'm only half awake, and having to

nd lips were trembling. With a quick, backward bend she stooped to pick up a f

clasp the lithe uncorseted waist that flinched from her touch. Lucy's elbow, thrown suddenly out, k

know what I'm saying. Go and get the children for supper, and don't

down, driblets of coffee running out. With her

agely. "I don't do it often, and it isn't such a wonderful sight. Get th

ths. One led to a central mound crowned with a wild sunflower blossom. Up the path to this Bob conducted twigs of sage, murmuring the adventures that attended their progress. When they reached the sunflower house he laid them carefully against its sides, continuing the unseen happenings that befell them on their entrance. The little girl lay beside him, her che

arden, and these are the people," holding up one of the sage twigs, "they wa

at the baby, who was pensively

baby play, to

now nuffing, she's too small," with

e and thrust a soft hand into Susan's, and maintained her silence as they walked toward the camp. The only object that seemed to have power to rouse her from her dejected reverie we

eld them listening with charmed attention. His foreign speech interlarded with French words added to the picturesqueness of his narratives, and he himself sitting crosslegged

n Sublette against the Blackfeet in 1832 joined the troop. When the two bands met, Godin volunteered to hold a conference with the Blackfeet chief. He chose as his companion an Indian of the Flathead tribe, once a powerful nation, but almost exterminated by wars with the Blackfeet. From

the Flathead to fire. The Indian levelled his gun, fired, and the Blackfeet chief rolled off

exultation in his voice, "Godin got reven

rom a sense of bewilderment, not so much at the sto

gue, who lying in the opening of her tent had been listening and now felt emboldened to express h

ings I've heard since I cam

in which for one unguarded mo

wicked?" he

eatedly, the wor

pipe of peace. That's like our flag of truce. You never heard

prehended their point of view and pretended ignorance, or whet

ed. "They were treacherous too. Should he wait t

him, some with a wide, expectant fixity, others bright with combative fire.

ys said he wa

asn't the man who killed h

hief of the t

nt man who probably had

th unmoved patience and careful Englis

peful of extracting from his face some clew to his involved and incomprehensible moral attitude. They suddenly felt as i

the right man, he must take such man as he could. The chief is the biggest man, and he comes where Godin has him. 'My father is avenged

ble to make Zavier see, and this new development in what had seemed a boyish and light-hearted being, full to the b

o you've got to thinking that the man that takes it into his own hands is a desperate kind of criminal. Out here in those days you wiped out such scores yourself or no one did. It seems to you that Godin did a pretty low down thing, but he thought he was doing the right thing for him. He'd had a wrong done him and he'd got to square it. And it

g astonishment that nobody could say anything. For a space they could only stare at him as

e a persistent, reiteration of his original proposition. Interruptions were furnished in a sudden, cracked laugh from Daddy John, and phrases of dissent or app

ousness. At first she lay with her eyes shut, breathing softly, till the sounds percolated through the stupor of her

es, the white flecks and slivers sliding along the dark oblong of their shapes as they strayed with loitering steps or stood whispering. The straight edge of their outline, the unbroken solidity of their bulk, told her they were wrapped in the same blanket, a custom in the Indian lover's cour

g backward, the dark one leaning toward it, till they rested together for a long, still moment. Then they separated, the woman drawing herself from the blanket and with a whispered word stealing away, a furtive figure flitting t

the dark walls of the tent the vision she had seen kept repeating itself, and as it returned upon her mental sight, new questions surged into her mind. A veil had been raised, and she had caught a glimpse of something in life, a new factor in the world, she had never known of. The first f