lp you along."

"Yes, Susie; that's true."

"So I'm tryin' to catch onto all I can, because"--her eyes dilated, and
she lowered her voice--"I'm goin' out in the world pretty soon."

"To school?"

She shook her head.

"I'm goin' to hunt up Dad's relations; and when I find 'em, I don't want
'em to be ashamed of me, and of him for marryin' into the Injuns."

"They need never be ashamed of you, Susie."

"Honest? Honest, don't you think so?" She looked at him wistfully. "I'd
try awful hard not to make breaks," she went on, "and make 'em feel like
cachin' me in the cellar when they saw company comin'. It's just plumb
awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for
something or somebody--for other kind of folks besides Injuns and
grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer
kind of bug, and laugh at you with their eyes.

"Dad's got kin, I know; for lots of times when I would go with him to hunt
horses, he would say, 'I'll take you back to see them some time, Susie,
girl.' But he never said where 'back' was, so I've got to find out myself.
Wouldn't it be awful, though"--and her chin quivered--"if after I'd been
on the trail for days and days, and my ponies were foot-sore, they wasn't
glad to see me when I rode up to the house, but hinted around that
horse-feed was short and grub was scarce, and they couldn't well winter
me?"

"They wouldn't do that," said McArthur reassuringly. "Nobody named
MacDonald would do that."

Susie began to untie the pasteboard box which contained her treasures.

"Nearly ever since Dad died, I've been getting ready to go. I don't mean
that I would leave Mother for keeps--of course not; but after I've found
'em, maybe I can coax 'em to come and live with us. I used to ask White
Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after
they'd sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a
lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named
MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends
there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I'll
have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first I'll go to
Selkirk.

"I'll take a good pack-outfit, and Running Rabbit to find trails and
wrangle horses. See--I've got my trail all marked out on the map."

She unfolded a worn leaf from a school geography.

"It looks as if it was only a sleep or two a