from above. It concerned Silver Tassel, he knew, but he could not
look round yet.

In another moment the boy was dragged up the bank by strong hands, and
Billy Rufus swung round in the water towards Silver Tassel, who, in his
confused energy, had struck another rock, and, exhausted now, was being
swept towards the rapids. Silver Tassel's shoulder scarcely showed, his
strength was gone. In a flash Billy Rufus saw there was but one thing to
do. He must run the rapids with Silver Tassel-there was no other way. It
would be a fight through the jaws of death; but no Indian's eyes had a
better sense for river-life than William Rufus Holly's.

How he reached Silver Tassel, and drew the Indian's arm over his own
shoulder; how they drove down into the boiling flood; how Billy Rufus's
fat body was battered and torn and ran red with blood from twenty flesh
wounds; but how by luck beyond the telling he brought Silver Tassel
through safely into the quiet water a quarter of a mile below the
rapids, and was hauled out, both more dead than alive, is a tale still
told by the Athabascas around their camp-fire. The rapids are known
to-day as the Mikonaree Rapids.

The end of this beginning of the young man's career was that Silver
Tassel gave him the word of eternal friendship, Knife-in-the-Wind took
him into the tribe, and the boy Wingo became his very own, to share his
home, and his travels, no longer a waif among the Athabascas.

After three days' feasting, at the end of which the missionary held his
first service and preached his first sermon, to the accompaniment of
grunts of satisfaction from the whole tribe of Athabascas, William Rufus
Holly began his work in the Far North.

The journey to Fort O'Call was a procession of triumph, for, as it was
summer, there was plenty of food, the missionary had been a success, and
he had distributed many gifts of beads and flannel.

All went well for many moons, although converts were uncertain and
baptisms few, and the work was hard and the loneliness at times
terrible. But at last came dark days.

One summer and autumn there had been poor fishing and shooting, the
caches of meat were fewer on the plains, and almost nothing had come
up to Fort O'Call from Edmonton, far below. The yearly supplies for the
missionary, paid for out of his private income--the bacon, beans, tea,
coffee and flour--had been raided by a band of hostile Indians, and he
viewed with deep concern the progress of the se