"By the _Ste. Anne_?"

He nodded. "It is the last chance this year; but I will come back--in the
spring."

As he said it he saw her shrink, and his heart smote him. Four years such
as few men ever spent, and all the luck had been with him, and the West
had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days, the
hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm lodge; and,
here, the great couch--ah, the cheek pressed to his, the lips that
whispered at his ear, the smooth arm round his neck. It all rushed upon
him now. His people! His people in the East, who had thwarted his youth,
vexed and cramped him, saw only evil in his widening desires, and threw
him over when he came out West--the scallywag, they called him, who had
never wronged a man--or a woman? Never--wronged--a--woman? The question
sprang to his lips now. Suddenly he saw it all in a new light. White or
brown or red, this heart and soul and body before him were all his, sacred
to him; he was in very truth her "chief."

Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was going on in him. She saw
the tears spring to his eyes. Then, coming close to him, she said, softly,
slowly: "I must go with you if you go, because you must be with me
when--Oh, _hai-yai_, my chief, shall we go from here? Here in this lodge
wilt thou be with thine own people--thine own, thou and I--_and thine to
come_." The great passion in her heart made the lie seem very truth.

With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her for a moment,
scarcely comprehending; then suddenly he clasped her in his arms.

"Mitiahwe--Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!" he cried. "You and me--and our
own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on the
couch. "Tell me again--is it so at last?" he said, and she whispered in
his ear once more.

In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will go
East--some day, perhaps."

"But now?" she asked, softly.

"Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to the
door of this lodge."

As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge,
reached up a hand and touched the horseshoe.

"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me, that
it may be as I have said to him. Oh, pity me, great Father!"

In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine--when her
hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed with the