ern.

He held her fingers, turning the small pink palm upward.

"We must get it out," he declared firmly. "They poison some people."

He wondered if it was imagination, or did her hand tremble a little in
his? His relief was not unmixed with disappointment when the cactus spine
came out easily.

"They hurt--those needles." He continued to regard the tiny puncture with
unabated interest.

"Tra! la! la!" sang Susie from the brow of the hill. "Old Smith is
comin'."

Ralston dropped Dora's hand, and they both reddened, each wondering how
long Susie had been doing picket duty.

"Out for your failin' health, Mister Smith?" inquired Susie, with
solicitude.

"I'm huntin' horses, and hopin' to pick up a bunch of ponies cheap," he
replied with ugly significance as he rode by.

And while the soft light faded from Ralston's eyes, the color leaped to
his face; unconsciously his fists clenched as he looked after Smith's
vanishing back. It was the latter's first overt act of hostility; Ralston
knew, and perhaps Smith intended it so, that the clash between them must
now come soon.

X

MOTHER LOVE AND SAVAGE PASSION CONFLICT

It was Sunday, a day later, when Susie came into the living-room and
noticed her mother sewing muskrat around the top of a moccasin. It was a
man's moccasin. The woman had made no men's moccasins since her husband's
death. The sight chilled the girl.

"Mother," she asked abruptly, "what do you let that hold-up hang around
here for?"

"Who you mean?" the woman asked quickly.

"That Smith!" Susie spat out the word like something offensive.

The Indian woman avoided the girl's eyes.

"I like him," she answered.

"Mother!"

"Maybe he stay all time." Her tone was stubborn, as though she expected
and was prepared to resist an attack.

"You don't--you _can't_--mean it!". Susie's thin face flushed scarlet with
shame.

"Sa-ah," the woman nodded, "I mean it;" and Susie, staring at her in a
kind of terror, saw that she did.

"Oh, Mother! Mother!" she cried passionately, dropping on the floor at the
woman's feet and clasping her arms convulsively about the Indian woman's
knees. "Don't--don't say that! We've always been a little different from
the rest. We've always held our heads up. People like us and respect
us--both Injuns and white. We've never been talked about--you and me--and
now you are going to spoil it all!"

"I get tied up to him right," defended the woman sullenly.

"Oh, Mo