with fine
contempt. The "dogs" were hewing with axes about some newly made carts,
or rushing around on errands as slaves are made to do. Everyone was busy
and did not notice him in his brown study.

From within the room near by he heard a woman sing a few notes in an
unknown tongue. Without moving a muscle of his face he stepped inside
the room, and when his eye became accustomed to the light, saw a young
squaw, who sat beading, and wore a dress superior to that of the others.
She stared a moment and then smiled. The Bat stood motionless for a long
time regarding her, and she dropped her gaze to her needlework.

"I' nisto' niwon (You were humming)," spoke the statued brave, but she
did not understand.

Again came the clicking gutturals of the harsh Chis-chis-chash tongue:
"Whose squaw are you?"--which was followed by the sign-talk familiar to
all Indians in those days.

The woman rose, opening her hand toward him and hissing for silence.
Going to the door, she looked into the sunlighted court, and, pointing
to the factor who was directing workmen, replied,

"Papin." He understood.

She talked by signs as she drew back, pointing to the Bat, and then
ran her hand across her own throat as though she held a knife, and then
laughed while her eyes sparkled.

Again he understood, and for the first time that day he smiled. There
are no preliminaries when a savage warrior concludes to act. The
abruptness of the Bat's love-making left room for few words, and his
attentions were not repulsed except that the fear of her liege lord out
by the carts made her flutter to escape that she might reassure herself.
She was once again covered by the sweep of the warrior's robe, and what
they whispered there, standing in its folds, no man can tell. The abrupt
entrance of Papin drowned all other thoughts, and filled the quiet fort
with a whirl of struggles and yells, in which all joined, even to the
dogs.

The outcome was that the Bat found himself thrown ignominiously into
the dust outside the walls, and the gate slammed after him. He gathered
himself together and looked around. No one of his people had seen the
melee from which he had emerged so ingloriously, yet humiliation
was terrible. Nothing like this had occurred before. Cowardly French
half-breeds had laid their hands on the warrior's body, even on his
sacred bat and eagle-plume; and they had been content to throw him away
as though he were a bone--merely to be rid of him.