she turned and sped away.

I was just out of sight again when that red blanket slipped down the
rocks and disappeared over the side of the ledge in the jungle of bushes
below me.

A little later, when Mary Gentry and O'mie and I sat with Marjie on the
Whately doorstep, she told us what Jean had said.

"Do you really think he will be good now?" asked Mary. She was always
credulous.

"Yes, of course," Marjie answered carelessly.

Her reply angered me. She seemed so ready to trust the word of this
savage who twenty-four hours before had tried to scalp her. Did his
manner please Marjie? Was the foolish girl attracted by this picturesque
creature? I clenched my fists in the dark.

"Girls are such silly things," I said to myself. "I thought better of
Marjie, but she is like all the rest." And then I blushed in the dark
for having such mean thoughts.

"Don't you think he will be good now, Phil?"

I did not know how eagerly she waited for my answer. Poor Marjie! To her
the Indian name was always a terror. Before I could reply O'mie broke
in:

"Marjory Whately, ye'll excuse me fur referrin' to it, but I ain't no
bigger than you are."

O'mie had not grown as the most of us had, and while he had a lightning
quickness of movement, and a courage that never faltered, he was no
match for the bigger boys in strength and endurance. Marjie was rounding
into graceful womanhood now, but she was not of the slight type. She
never lost her dimples, and the vigorous air of the prairies gave her
that splendid physique that made her a stranger to sickness and kept the
wild-rose bloom on her fair cheeks. O'mie did not outweigh her.

"Ye'll 'scuse me," O'mie went on, "fur the embarrassin' statement; but I
ain't big, I run mostly to brains, while Phil here, an' Bill, an' Dave,
an' Bud, an' Possum Conlow runs mostly to beef; an' yet, bein' small, I
ain't afraid none of your good Injun. But take this warnin' from me, an
old friend that knew your grandmother in long clothes, that you kape
wide of Jean Pahusca's trail. Don't you trust him."

Marjie gave a little shiver. Had I been something less a fool then I
should have known that it was a shiver of fear, but I was of the age to
know everything, and O'mie sitting there had learned my heart in a
moment on the prairie the evening before. And then I wanted Marjie to
trust to me. Her eyes were like stars in the soft twilight, and her
white face lost its color, but she did not look at me.