had
reached this lonely mountain valley of the Big Horn region on the night
that the cold fall rains set in, and Antelope had hurriedly constructed
an arbor house or rude shelter of pine and cedar boughs.

It was enough. There they sat, man and wife, in their first home of
living green! The cheerful fire was burning in the center, and the happy
smoke went straight up among the tall pines. There was no human eye
to gaze upon them to embarrass--not even a common language in which to
express their love for one another.

Their marriage, they believed, was made by a spirit, and it was holy in
their minds. Each had cast away his people and his all for the sake of
this emotion which had suddenly overtaken them both with overwhelming
force, and the warrior's ambition had disappeared before it like a
morning mist before the sun.

To them a new life was just beginning, and they had all but forgotten
the existence of any world save this. The young bride was enshrined in a
bower of spicy fragrance, and her face shone whenever her eyes met those
of her husband.

"This is as I would have it, kechuwa (darling)!" exclaimed the Sioux in
his own language. She simply responded with a childlike smile. Although
she did not understand his words, she read in the tones of his voice
only happy and loving thoughts.

The Ree girl had prepared a broiled bison steak, and her husband was
keeping the fire well fed with dry fagots. The odor of the buming fat
was delicious, and the gentle patter of the rain made a weird music
outside their wigwam.

As soon as her husband had left her alone--for he must go to water the
ponies and conceal them at a distance--Stasu came out to collect more
wood. Instinctively she looked all about her. Huge mountains towered
skyward, clad in pines. The narrow valley in which she was wound its way
between them, and on every side there was heavy forest.

She stood silent and awed, scarcely able to realize that she had
begun her new life absolutely alone, with no other woman to advise or
congratulate her, and visited only by the birds of the air. Yet all the
world to her just now was Antelope! No other woman could smile on him.
He could not talk to any one but her. The evening drum at the council
lodge could not summon him away from her, and she was well content.

When the young wife had done everything she could think of in
preparation for her husband's return, including the making of several
birch-bark basins and