"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 pa.s.sion 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 p.r.o.ne 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."

He caught her arm suddenly. "No, but I want to hear it always. I want to be always where you are, Nance. That's what's got to be settled to-day--to-night."

"Oh, it's got to be settled to-night!" said the girl, meditatively, kicking nervously at a log on the fire. "It takes two to settle a thing like that, and there's only one says it's got to be settled. Maybe it takes more than two--or three--to settle a thing like that." Now she laughed mirthlessly.

The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on himself, drew a step back, and watched her.

"_One_ can settle a thing, if there's a dozen in it. You see, Nance, you and Bantry've got to close out. He's fixing it up to-night over at Dingan's Drive, and you can't go it alone when you quit this place. Now, it's this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with me.

Away North there's buffalo and deer, and game a-plenty, up along the Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It's going to be all right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way yet.

There'll be no smuggling, but there'll be trading, and land to get; and, mebbe, there'd be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know how--good white whiskey--and we'll still have this free life for our own.

I can't make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going to church on Sundays, and all that. And the West's in your bones, too. You look like the West--"

The girl's face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily.

"You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold--"

She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became conscious of the slight odor of spirits in the air, and the light in her face lowered in intensity.

"You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o' the birds in your voice; and you're going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin' to you stiddy four years. It's a long time to wait on the chance, for there's always _women_ to be got, same as others have done--men like Dingan with Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I ain't bin lookin'

that way. I bin lookin' only toward you." He laughed eagerly, and lifted a tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. "I'm lookin' toward you now, Nance. Your health and mine together. It's got to be settled now. You got to go to the 'Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me."

The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of himself.

"Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said, quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compa.s.s, even when Abe Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not going West with Bantry, but there's three other points that's open."

With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to face him. He was swelling with anger. "You--Nick Pringle, that trading cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--"

"Let go my shoulders," she said, quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented, seeing the look in his face, and realizing that, after all, it was a tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to such fury. "But yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a prairie-flower--"

"Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about prairie-flowers--"

He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him, and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but well-made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by his rough clothes.

"Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone.

"I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forward. "You needn't have worried."

"I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in the Barfleur Coulee, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I know him! Abe Hawley's all O.K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive.

Honor among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added, carelessly, to Hawley, and took a step forward, as though to shake hands.

Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he turned to the girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not hear.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"It's nine o'clock," answered the girl, her eyes watching his every movement, her face alive.