my wife. You shall obey me.
You shall stop talking nonsense. You may as well understand. Pick
together what duds you need and let's get off as soon as possible.
Every hour here is fresh danger. Come. Please hurry."

But she did not hurry, not in the least. Indeed, had she followed her
heart wholly, she would never have hastened one degree toward the end
she had elected. But she followed it only in part; so she stole
quietly up to where the man fumed and flustered and clasped her arms
about his neck and laid her beautiful face against his own.

"Love: this is not our first separation, nor our longest. Many a month
have you been away from me, up there in the north, getting money and
more money, till I hated its very name,--only that I knew we could use
it for others. In that, and in most things, I will obey you as I have.
In this I must obey the voice of God. Life is better than money, and
to save life or to comfort death is the price of this, our last
separation."

After that he said no more; but recognizing the nobility of her
effort, even though he still felt it mistaken, and with a credulous
remembrance of Katasha's saying, he made her preparations and his own
without delay and parted from her as has been told.

"Well, my dear Other Mother, there is one thing to comfort! Hard as it
was to see them all go, we shall have no time to brood. And we shall
be together. Let us get on now to our work. There were five new cases
this morning; and time flies! Oh, if I were wiser and knew better what
to do for such a sickness! The best we can--that's all."

"What the Great Spirit puts into our hands, that we can always lift,"
replied Wahneenah, and, with her arm still about her darling's waist,
they walked together Fortward. It may be that in the Indian's jealous,
if devoted, heart there was just a tinge of thankfulness for even an
evil so dire, since it gave her back her "White Papoose" quite to
herself again.

"Well, I can watch her all I choose, and no burden shall fall to her
share that I can spare her. The easy part--the watching and the
soothing and the Bible reading--that shall be hers. Mine will be the
coarsest tasks," she thought, and--as Gaspar had done--reckoned
without her host.

"It is turn and turn about, Other Mother, or I will drive you out of
the place," Kitty declared; and after a few useless struggles, which
merely wasted the time that should have been given their patients, it
was so settled; and so co