last child, as she had lost so many others. What would she herself
do if she were in Mitiahwe's place? Ah, she would make him stay
somehow--by truth or by falsehood; by the whispered story in the long
night, by her head upon his knee before the lodge-fire, and her eyes
fixed on his, luring him, as the Dream lures the dreamer into the far
trail, to find the Sun's hunting-ground where the plains are filled
with the deer and the buffalo and the wild horse; by the smell of the
cooking-pot and the favourite spiced drink in the morning; by the child
that ran to him with his bow and arrows and the cry of the hunter--but
there was no child; she had forgotten. She was always recalling her own
happy early life with her man, and the clean-faced papooses that crowded
round his knee--one wife and many children, and the old Harvester of the
Years reaping them so fast, till the children stood up as tall as
their father and chief. That was long ago, and she had had her
share--twenty-five years of happiness; but Mitiahwe had had only four.
She looked at Mitiahwe, standing still for a moment like one rapt, then
suddenly she gave a little cry. Something had come into her mind, some
solution of the problem, and she ran and stooped over the girl and put
both hands on her head.

"Mitiahwe, heart's blood of mine," she said, "the birds go south, but
they return. What matter if they go so soon, if they return soon. If the
Sun wills that the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close
the rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow and the gun,
yet he may be sorry, and send a second summer--has it not been so, and
Coldmaker has hurried away--away! The birds go south, but they will
return, Mitiahwe."

"I heard a cry in the night while my man slept," Mitiahwe answered,
looking straight before her, "and it was like the cry of a bird-calling,
calling, calling."

"But he did not hear--he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not wake,
surely it was good luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him sleeping.
Surely it was good luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear."

She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which
would, perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but
the time to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see.

Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her
eyes. "Hai-yai!" she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the
lodge, and from a leather bag drew f