he Indian agent. Peter was relieved; he had been
anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which might be produced
on her excitable nature by a first view of her own kinsfolk, although
she was still ignorant of her relationship. Her interest and curiosity,
however, had nothing abnormal in it. But he was not prepared for the
effect produced upon THEM at her first appearance. A few of the braves
gathered eagerly around her, and one even addressed her in his own
guttural tongue, at which she betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and
Peter saw with satisfaction that she drew close to him. Knowing that his
old interpreter and Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a
hundred miles away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply
introduced her as his sister. But he presently found that the braves had
added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen demeanor,
and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of the agent's wife,
while he prosecuted his business of examination and inspection. Later,
on his return to the cabin, he was met by the agent, who seemed to be
with difficulty suppressing a laugh.

"Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here," he said. "Do you know
that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist upon it
that she's A SQUAW, and that you're keeping her in captivity against
your plighted faith to them! You'll excuse me," he went on with an
attempt to recover his gravity, "troubling you with their d--d fool
talk, and you won't say anything to HER about it, but I thought you
ought to know it on account of your position among 'em. You don't want
to lose their confidence, and you know how easily their skeery faculties
are stampeded with an idea!"

"Where is she now?" demanded Peter, with a darkening face.

"Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon. I thought she might be a little
skeered of the braves, and I've kept them away. SHE'S all right, you
know; only if you intend to stay here long I'd"--

But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket of
cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's voices.
When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump,
surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old
women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had
already half mischievously, half curiously possessed themselves of her
dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves, and were parading