ngest and favorite wife,
and leaving her to perish miserably in the cold of that December month
in which we also had suffered. His plan had been to escape from the
Kiowas and reach the Cheyennes on the Sweetwater before we did, to meet
me there, and this time, to give no moment for my rescue. So Hard Rope's
message ran. But this was not all. The punishment that fell on Jean
Pahusca was in proportion to his crime, as an Indian counts justice. He
was sold as a slave to the Apaches and carried captive to the mountains
of Old Mexico. Nor was he ever liberated again. Up above the snow line,
with the passes guarded (for Jean was as dangerous to his mother's race
as to his father's), he had fretted away his days, dying at last of cold
and cruel neglect among the dreary rocks of the icy peaks. This much
information Hard Rope's letter brought. I burned both the letter and the
blanket, telling no one of them except my father.

"This Hard Rope was for some reason very friendly to me on your
account," I said. "He told me on the Washita the night before we left
Camp Inman that he had shadowed Jean all the time he was at Fort Sill,
and had more than once prevented the half-breed from making an attack on
me. He promised to let me know what became of Pahusca if he ever found
out. He has kept his word."

"I know Hard Rope," my father said. "I saved his life one annuity day
long ago. Tell Mapleson had made Jean Pahusca drunk. You know what kind
of a beast he was then. And Tell had run this Osage into Jean's path,
where he would be sure to lose his life, and Tell would have the big
pile of money Hard Rope carried. That's the kind of beast Tell was. An
Indian has his own sense of obligation; and then it is a good asset to
be humane all along the line anyhow, although I never dreamed I was
saving the man who was to save my boy."

"Shall we tell Le Claire?" I asked.

"Only that both Jean and his father are dead. We'll spare him the rest.
Le Claire has gone to St. Louis to a monastery. He will never be strong
again. But he is one of the kings of the earth; he has given the best
years of his manhood to build up a kingdom of peace between the white
man and the savage. No record except the Great Book of human deeds will
ever be able to show how much we owe to men like Le Claire whose
influence has helped to make a loyal peaceful tribe like the Osages. The
brutal fiendishness of the Plains Indians is the heritage of Spanish
cruelty toward the