as long
as I do not try to break away. What can you, one man, do against two
thousand Sioux?" and she began to weep, choking back the anguished sobs,
that shook her slender frame, and picking feverishly at the red shawl
fringe.

To look at that agonized face would have been sacrilege, and in a
helpless, nonplussed way, I kept gazing at the painful workings of the
thin, frail fingers. That plucking of the wasted, trembling hands haunts
me to this day; and never do I see the fingers of a nervous, sensitive
woman working in that delirious, aimless fashion but it sets me
wondering to what painful treatment from a brutalized nature she has
been subjected, that her hands take on the tricks of one in the last
stages of disease. It may be only the fancy of an old trader; but I dare
avow, if any sympathetic observer takes note of this simple trick of
nervous fingers, it will raise the veil on more domestic tragedies and
heart-burnings than any father-confessor hears in a year.

"Miriam," said I, in answer to her timid protest, "Eric has risked his
life seeking you. Won't you try all for Eric's sake? There'll be little
risk! We'll wait for a dark, boisterous, stormy night, and you will roll
out of your tent the way you thrust my Indian out. I'll have my horses
ready. I'll creep up behind and whisper through the tent."

"Where _is_ Eric?" she asked, beginning to waver.

Two shrill, sharp whistles came from Louis Laplante, commanding me to
come out of the tent.

"That's my signal! I must go. Quick, Miriam, will you try?"

"I will do what you wish," she answered, so low, I had to kneel to catch
the words.

"A stormy night our signal, then," I cried.

Three, sharp, terrified whistles, signifying, "We are caught, save
yourself," came from Laplante, and I flung myself on the ground behind
Miriam.

"Spread out your arms, Miriam! Quick!" I urged. "Talk to the boy, or
we're trapped."

With her shawl spread out full and her elbows sticking akimbo, she
caught the lad in her arms and began dandling him to right, and left,
humming some nursery ditty. At the same moment there loomed in the tent
entrance the great, statuesque figure of the Sioux squaw, whom I had
seen in the gorge. I kicked my feet under the canvas wall, while
Miriam's swaying shawl completely concealed me from the Sioux woman and
thus I crawled out backwards. Then I lay outside the tent and listened,
listened with my hand on my pistol, for what might not that mon