m evil and is sacred from the touch
of woman. As she lingers the night-breeze seems to bring a voice from the
water: "Can a Dakota woman want courage when she is forced to marry the
man she hates?"

She delays no longer. A knife-blade glitters for an instant in the
moonlight--and Cloudy Sky is dead. Strange, is it not, that the thunder
birds flap so heavily along the west at that moment and a peal of
laughter sounds from the lake? She washes the blood from the blade,
steals to her father's lodge, and pretends to sleep. In the morning she
is loud in her grief when it is made known to her that the medicine-man
was no more, and the doer of the deed is never discovered. In time her
wan face gets its color and when the leaves begin to fall Red Deer
returns and weds her.

They seem to be happy for a time, and have two sons who promise to be
famous hunters, but consumption fastens on Red Deer and he dies far from
the village. The sons are shot by enemies, and while their bodies are on
their way to Harpstenah's lodge she, too, is stricken dead by lightning.
The spirit of Cloudy Sky had rejoined the thunder birds, and the water
manitou had promised falsely.

PROVIDENCE HOLE

The going of white men into the prairies aroused the same sort of
animosity among the Indians that they have shown in other parts of the
country when retiring before the advance of civilization, and many who
tried to plant corn on the rolling lands of Iowa, though they did no harm
to the red men, paid for the attempt with their lives. Such was the fate
of a settler who had built his cabin on the Wyoming hills, near
Davenport. While working in his fields an arrow, shot from a covert, laid
him low, and his scalp was cut away to adorn the belt of a savage. His
little daughter, left alone, began to suffer from fears and loneliness as
the sun went lower and lower, and when it had come to its time of setting
she put on her little bonnet and went in search of him. As she gained the
slope where he had last been seen, an Indian lifted his head from the
grass and looked at her.

Starting back to run, she saw another behind her. Escape seemed hopeless,
and killing or captivity would have been her lot had not a crevice opened
in the earth close to where she stood. Dropping on hands and knees she
hastily crawled in, and found herself in what seemed to be an extensive
cavern. Hardly had she time to note the character of the place when the
gap closed as strange