ssy had
first called her an Indian; how right she had been! Two years ago she,
Split, was making over all her dolls to Fom. Two years ago she had
already discovered Jack Cody's fleet strength, his wonderful aptness at
making swift sleds, in which her reckless spirit reveled, his mastership
of other boys of his gang, and--her mastery of him.

She turned and beckoned to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer
like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of
him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down
over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians;
past the miners coming off shift; past the lamplighter making his rounds
in the crisp, clear cold of the evening; past the heavy-laden squaws,
with their bowed heads, their papooses on their backs, their weary arms
bearing home the spoils of a hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow
dogs trudging, too, wearily and dejectedly at their heels, toward the
rest of the wickiup and the acrid warmth of the sage-brush camp-fire.

In short, swift sentences, as they hurdled over artificially raised
obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy
cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan--with reservations. She was
not prepared to admit to so humble a worshiper the secret of her birth,
but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the heroine
concealed beneath a frivolous exterior--these she was willing Jack Cody
should suspect and admire.

"We'll lift them up, you and I, Jack. I'm going 'to--to be the angel of
a homeless tribe,' or something like that," she quoted, as it grew
darker and the sled slowed down a bit, where the slant of the
hill-street became gentler and she need not hold on tight. "You'll be
their general and I their princess. You'll teach them to be fine
soldiers, so that the people in town will be afraid of them and have to
give them back their lands--and the mines, too. They're theirs, and
they shall have them and be millionaires. And, of course, so will we.
We'll own all the stocks and brokers' offices, and after a few years,
when they're quite civilized, we'll come up to town to live. We'll take
Bob Graves's 'Castle' and--Jack! Ah!"

A long scream burst from her. Never in her life had Split Madigan
screamed like that. For an incredibly fleet instant she actually saw
above her head a struggling horse's hoofs. In the next, her
calico-wrappered knight had thr