harvest
from a little seed, if ye will but dig and plant, and plough and sow and
reap, and lend your backs to toil. Now hear and heed. The end is come.

"For this once ye shall be fed--by the blood of my heart, ye shall
be fed! And another year ye shall labour, and get the fruits of your
labour, and not stand waiting, as it were, till a fish shall pass the
spear, or a stag water at your door, that ye may slay and eat. The end
is come, ye idle men. O chief, harken! One of your braves would have
slain me, even as you slew my brother--he one, and you a thousand. Speak
to your people as I have spoken, and then come and answer for the deed
done by your hand. And this I say that right shall be done between men
and men. Speak."

Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail. Arrowhead rose
slowly, the cloud gone out of his face, and spoke to his people, bidding
them wait in peace until food came, and appointing his son chief in his
stead until his return.

"The white man speaks truth, and I will go," he said. "I shall return,"
he continued, "if it be written so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life;
and if it be not so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees
will know me not again. The days of my youth are spent, and my step no
longer springs from the ground. I shuffle among the grass and the fallen
leaves, and my eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white man is
master--if he wills it we shall die, if he wills it we shall live. And
this was ever so. It is in the tale of our people. One tribe ruled, and
the others were their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree
of Life that the white man rule us for ever, then it shall be so. I have
spoken. Now, behold I go."

Jim had conquered, and together they sped away with the dogs through the
sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white,
and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell
to the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the
load it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim
and Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on
their snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the wide white prairie.

A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at night in the open
in a trench dug in the snow, no fear in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in
the heart of the heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness, of
uncertainty, on Jim's part