ir fallen chief with faces graver, if possible, than
usual. They bound up his wounds as well as they could, and made a
rough-and-ready stretcher out of two poles and a blanket, in which they
carried him into camp. During the greater part of the short journey he
was nearly if not quite unconscious. When they at length laid him down
in his tent, his mother, although obviously anxious, maintained a stern
composure peculiar to her race.

Not so the captive Moonlight. When she saw the apparently dead form of
Rushing River carried into his tent, covered with blood and dust, her
partially white spirit was not to be restrained. She uttered a sharp
cry, which slightly roused the chief, and, springing to his side, went
down on her knees and seized his hand. The action was involuntary and
almost momentary. She recovered herself at once, and rose quickly, as
grave and apparently as unmoved as the reddest of squaws. But Rushing
River had noted the fact, and divined the cause. The girl loved him! A
new sensation of almost stern joy filled his heart. He turned over on
his side without a look or word to any one, and calmly went to sleep.

We have already said, or hinted, that Rushing River was a peculiar
savage. He was one of those men--perhaps not so uncommon as we think--
who hold the opinion that women are not made to be mere beasts of
burden, makers of moccasins and coats, and menders of leggings, cookers
of food, and, generally, the slaves of men. One consequence was that he
could not bear the subdued looks and almost cringing gait of the
Blackfoot belles, and had remained a bachelor up to the date of our
story.

He preferred to live with his mother, who, by the way, was also an
exception to the ordinary class of squaws. She was rudely intellectual
and violently self-assertive, though kind-hearted withal.

That night when his mother chanced to be alone in the tent, he held some
important conversation with her. Moonlight happened to be absent at a
jumping-jack entertainment with Skipping Rabbit in the tent of
Eaglenose, the youth himself being the performer in spite of his nose!
Most of the other women in the camp were at the place where the buffalo
were being cut up and dried and converted into pemmican.

"Mother," said Rushing River, who in reality had been more stunned than
injured--excepting, of course, the little finger, which was indeed gone
past recovery.

"My son," said Umqua, looking attentively in the