orth a horse-shoe and looked at it,
murmuring to herself.

The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. "What is it, Mitiahwe?" she
asked.

"It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is
put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad
thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid
from all the world, then it brings good-luck. Hai-yai! I will put it
over the door, and then--" All at once her hand dropped to her side, as
though some terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the
floor, she rocked her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing.
But presently she got to her feet again, and, going to the door of the
lodge, fastened the horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string
of buckskin.

"Oh great Sun," she prayed, "have pity on me and save me! I cannot live
alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O
great one, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that
he will say, This is mine, body of my body, and he will hear the cry and
will stay. O great Sun, pity me!" The old woman's heart beat faster as
she listened. The same thought was in the mind of both. If there were
but a child, bone of his bone, then perhaps he would not go; or, if he
went, then surely he would return, when he heard his papoose calling in
the lodge in the wilderness.

As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift
Wing said: "It is good. The white man's Medicine for a white man's wife.
But if there were the red man's Medicine too--"

"What is the red man's Medicine?" asked the young wife, as she smoothed
her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red
sash round her waist.

The old woman shook her head, a curious half-mystic light in her eyes,
her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something.
"It is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the
head. I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there
were no white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman's
breast there hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red
men were like leaves in the forest--but it was a winter of winters ago,
and the Medicine Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child! When Long
Hand comes, what will Mitiahwe say to him?"

Mitiahwe's eyes were determined, her face was set, she flushed deeply,
then the colour fled. "What