d the
West had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful
days, the hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm
lodge; and, here, the great couch--ah, the cheek pressed to his, the
lips that whispered at his ear, the smooth arm round his neck. It
all rushed upon him now. His people? His people in the East, who had
thwarted his youth, vexed and cramped him, saw only evil in his widening
desires, and threw him over when he came out West--the scallywag,
they called him, who had never wronged a man or-or a woman!
Never--wronged-a-woman? The question sprang to his lips now. Suddenly
he saw it all in a new light. White or brown or red, this heart and soul
and body before him were all his, sacred to him; he was in very truth
her "Chief."

Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was going on in him. She
saw the tears spring to his eyes. Then, coming close to him she said
softly, slowly: "I must go with you if you go, because you must be with
me when--oh, hai-yai, my chief, shall we go from here? Here in this
lodge wilt thou be with thine own people--thine own, thou and I--and
thine to come." The great passion in her heart made the lie seem very
truth.

With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her for a moment,
scarcely comprehending; then suddenly he clasped her in his arms.

"Mitiahwe--Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!" he cried. "You and me--and our
own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on the
couch. "Tell me again--it is so at last?" he said, and she whispered in
his ear once more.

In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will
go East--some day, perhaps."

"But now?" she asked softly.

"Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to
the door of this lodge."

As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge,
reached up a hand and touched the horse-shoe.

"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me
that it may be as I have said to him. O pity me, great Father!"

In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine; when her
hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed
with the Medicine Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man--but
Mitiahwe said it was her Medicine, the horse-shoe, which brought one of
Dingan's own people to the lodge, a little girl with Mitiahwe's eyes and
form and her father's face. Truth has many my