ating
McLean and McTavish for some petty dereliction of duty, helped her to
pluck up courage. She tried not to let him go out of her sight, and when
she followed him into the huge cache and saw him twirling and tossing
great bales around as though they were feather pillows, she felt
strengthened in her disobedience to her father. Also (it was her first
visit to the warehouse, and Sin Rock was the chief distributing point to
several chains of lesser posts), she was astounded at the endlessness of
the wealth there stored away.

This sight and the picture in her mind's eye of the bare lodge of
Snettishane, put all doubts at rest. Yet she capped her conviction by a
brief word with one of her step-sons. "White daddy good?" was what she
asked, and the boy answered that his father was the best man he had ever
known. That night the raven croaked again. On the night following the
croaking was more persistent. It awoke the Factor, who tossed restlessly
for a while. Then he said aloud, "Damn that raven," and Lit-lit laughed
quietly under the blankets.

In the morning, bright and early, Snettishane put in an ominous
appearance and was set to breakfast in the kitchen with Wanidani. He
refused "squaw food," and a little later bearded his son-in-law in the
store where the trading was done. Having learned, he said, that his
daughter was such a jewel, he had come for more blankets, more tobacco,
and more guns--especially more guns. He had certainly been cheated in
her price, he held, and he had come for justice. But the Factor had
neither blankets nor justice to spare. Whereupon he was informed that
Snettishane had seen the missionary at Three Forks, who had notified him
that such marriages were not made in heaven, and that it was his father's
duty to demand his daughter back.

"I am good Christian man now," Snettishane concluded. "I want my Lit-lit
to go to heaven."

The Factor's reply was short and to the point; for he directed his father-
in-law to go to the heavenly antipodes, and by the scruff of the neck and
the slack of the blanket propelled him on that trail as far as the door.

But Snettishane sneaked around and in by the kitchen, cornering Lit-lit
in the great living-room of the Fort.

"Mayhap thou didst sleep over-sound last night when I called by the river
bank," he began, glowering darkly.

"Nay, I was awake and heard." Her heart was beating as though it would
choke her, but she went on steadily, "And