,' he said. 'Tawaina friend. Help some time,--not now.' And he
turned away again.

'Does the Raven know the White Bird,' the chief asked him, 'that she
sings his name?'

Tawaina paused and said,--

'Tawaina knows her. Her father is the great white brave.'

The Indian chief gave a bound of astonishment and pleasure.

'The white brave with the shooting flames?'

Tawaina nodded.

The Raven's meeting with Ethel had been apparently accidental, but was
in reality intentional. Her actual captor was one of the chiefs,
although not the principal one, of the Pampas Indians; and in the
division of the spoil, preparations for which were going on, there was
no doubt that she would be assigned to that tribe, without any question
upon the part of the Raven's people.

Now, however, that the Stag knew who the prisoner was, he determined to
obtain her for his tribe. He therefore went direct to the chief of the
Pampas Indians, and asked that the white girl might fall to his tribe.

The chief hesitated.

'She is our only captive,' he said. 'The people will like to see her,
and she will live in the lodge of the Fox, who carried her off.'

'The Stag would like her for a slave to his wife. He will give fifty
bullocks and two hundred sheep to the tribe, and will make the Fox's
heart glad with a present.'

The offer appeared so large for a mere puny girl, that the chief
assented at once; and the Fox was content to take a gun, which proved
part of the spoil, for his interest in his captive.

The Indians of the Stag's tribe murmured to themselves at this costly
bargain upon the part of their chief. However, they expressed nothing of
this before him, and continued the work of counting and separating the
animals in proportion to the number of each tribe present,--the tribes
from the plains being considerably the more numerous.

Not until four o'clock were they again in motion, when each tribe
started direct for home.

In three hours' riding they reached the spring, and then the Stag
ordered a small tent of skins to be erected for Ethel's accommodation.

From this she came out an hour later to gaze upon the great wave of fire
which, kindled at a point far away by their scouts, now swept along
northward, passing at a distance of three or four miles from the spring.

It was when sitting gravely round the fire later on, that the Stag
deigned to enlighten his followers as to his reasons for giving what
seemed to them so great a pric