iver and Moonlight were married--not
after the simple Indian fashion, but with the assistance of a real
pale-faced missionary, who was brought from a distance of nearly three
hundred miles, from a pale-face pioneer settlement, for the express
purpose of tying that knot along with several other knots of the same
kind, and doing what in him lay to establish and strengthen the good
work which the old preacher had begun.

Years passed away, and a fur-trading establishment was sent into those
western regions, which gradually attracted round it a group of Indians,
who not only bartered skins with the traders, but kept them constantly
supplied with meat. Among the most active hunters of this group were
our friends Little and Big Tim, Bounding Bull, Rushing River, and
Eaglenose. Sometimes these hunted singly, sometimes in couples, not
unfrequently all together, for they were a very sociable band.

Whitewing was not one of them, for he devoted himself exclusively to
wandering about the mountains and prairies, telling men and women and
children of the Saviour of sinners, of righteousness and judgment to
come--a self-appointed Red Indian missionary, deriving his authority
from the Word of God.

But the prairie chief did not forsake his old and well-tried friends.
He left a hostage in the little community, a sort of living lodestone,
which was sure to bring him back again and again, however far his
wanderings might extend. This was a wrinkled specimen of female
humanity, which seemed to be absolutely incapable of extinction because
of the superhuman warmth of its heart and the intrinsic hilarity of its
feelings! Whoever chanced to inquire for Whitewing, whether in summer
or in winter, in autumn or in spring, was sure to receive some such
answer as the following: "Nobody knows where he is. He wanders here and
there and everywhere; but he'll not be absent long, for he always turns
up, sooner or later, to see his old mother."

Yes, that mummified old mother, that "dear old one," was a sort of
planet round which Brighteyes and Softswan and Moonlight and Skipping
Rabbit and others, with a host of little Brighteyes and little
Softswans, revolved, forming a grand constellation, which the men of the
settlement gazed at and followed as the mariners of old followed the
Pole star.

The mention of Skipping Rabbit reminds us that we have something more to
say about her.

It so happened that the fur trader who had been sent to establ