won't do for 'em to say where Jack Halloway can
hear 'em that thar's nothing in the Christian religion. I know better,
'cause I've got it right there!" exclaimed the trapper, thumping his
heart.

"From that time forward everything was rosy with me. The sun never
shone so bright, the birds never sung so sweet and I never felt so
happy through and through. I shouted and yelled for joy and walloped
the horses, just because I couldn't help it. If I had met anyone at
those times he would have set me down as drunk. So I was--drunk with
pure joy and religion.

"At St. Louis I sold my peltries for the biggest price I've got in ten
years. I took the money home and throwed it into the lap of my little,
sweet, gray-haired mother, who just stared at me, not knowing what it
meant. When I made it all clear she began crying, and then she dropped
on her knees and I dropped alongside of her, and when she got through
praying I took up the job and kept things humming for another half
hour. After I'd let up I grabbed her in my arms, and we danced about
that cabin, just as she used to do when she was the belle of the town,
and we laughed and frolicked and made a couple of fools of ourselves.

"When she asked me to tell her the meaning of my short rein-up and
change of my life, I give her the whole thing. It was the work of a
young Shawanoe Injin called Deerfoot, who was the most ginooine
Christian on either side of the old Mississippi. She asked all about
you, Deerfoot, and she said she hoped she would meet you some day. So
when we get back to St. Louis I'll introduce you."

"Deerfoot will be glad to see the mother of my brother," softly replied
the Shawanoe, in a voice tremulous with feeling. He and the boys
listened with absorbed interest to the graphic story told by the
trapper.

"French Pete keeps the worst whiskey hole along the Mississippi. It is
down by the river side and is the main drinking place in the town. He
has got hundreds of dollars from the families of the trappers who come
down the river in the spring, and for years he has gathered in about
every cent I could rake together.

"Wal, after I had been home about a week I strolled down to his place
one moonlight night. I told mother not to worry about me, for I would
blow my own head off before I'd ever swaller another drop of red
p'ison. When I opened the door of the ramshackle cabin, Pete looked up
with a grin, and said as how he was wondering where I'd kept myself so