Part 5

"I have been alone before--for five days," she answered, quietly.

"But it must be longer this time."

"How long?" she asked, with eyes fixed on his. "If it is more than a week, I will go too."

"It is longer than a month," he said.

"Then I will go."

"I am going to see my people," he faltered.

"By the Ste. Anne?"

He nodded. "It is the last chance this year; but I will come back--in the spring."

As he said it he saw her shrink, and his heart smote him. Four years such as few men ever spent, and all the luck had been with him, and the West had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days, the hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm lodge; and, here, the great couch--ah, the cheek pressed to his, the lips that whispered at his ear, the smooth arm round his neck. It all rushed upon him now. His people! His people in the East, who had thwarted his youth, vexed and cramped him, saw only evil in his widening desires, and threw him over when he came out West--the scallywag, they called him, who had never wronged a man--or a woman? Never--wronged--a--woman? The question sprang to his lips now. Suddenly he saw it all in a new light. White or brown or red, this heart and soul and body before him were all his, sacred to him; he was in very truth her "chief."

Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was going on in him. She saw the tears spring to his eyes. Then, coming close to him, she said, softly, slowly: "I must go with you if you go, because you must be with me when--Oh, hai-yai, my chief, shall we go from here? Here in this lodge wilt thou be with thine own people--thine own, thou and I--and thine to come." The great passion in her heart made the lie seem very truth.

With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her for a moment, scarcely comprehending; then suddenly he clasped her in his arms.

"Mitiahwe--Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!" he cried. "You and me--and our own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on the couch. "Tell me again--is it so at last?" he said, and she whispered in his ear once more.

In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will go East--some day, perhaps."

"But now?" she asked, softly.

"Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to the door of this lodge."

As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge, reached up a hand and touched the horseshoe.

"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me, that it may be as I have said to him. Oh, pity me, great Father!"

In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine--when her hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed with the Medicine Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man; but Mitiahwe said it was her Medicine, the horseshoe, which brought one of Dingan's own people to the lodge--a little girl with Mitiahwe's eyes and form and her father's face. Truth has many mysteries, and the faith of the woman was great; and so it was that, to the long end, Mitiahwe kept her man. But truly she was altogether a woman, and had good-fortune.

ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER

"It's got to be settled to-night, Nance, This game is up here, up forever. The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they'll soon be roostin' in this post, the Injuns are goin', the buffaloes are most gone, and the fur trade's dead in these parts. D'ye see?"

The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her, but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes, and a face somewhat set.

"You and your brother Bantry's got to go. This store ain't worth a cent now. The Hudson's Bay Company'll come along with the redcoats, and they'll set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they call 'agricultural settlers.' There'll be a railway, and the Yankees'll send up their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--"

"And the days of smuggling will be over," put in the girl, in a low voice. "No more bull-whackers and mule-skinners 'whooping-it up'; no more Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting one anothers' throats. A nice, quiet time coming on the border Abe, eh?"

The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was not in the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something unusual and defamatory.

"Why, gol darn it, Nance, what's got into you? You bin a man out West, as good a pioneer as ever was on the border. But now you don't sound friendly to what's been the game out here, and to all of us that've been risking our lives to get a livin'."

"What did I say?" asked the girl, unmoved.

"It ain't what you said, it's the sound o' your voice."

"You don't know my voice, Abe. It ain't always the same. You ain't always about; you don't always hear it."