y as any of 'em over thar!"

"Maybe that's true. If it is, then they'd like us, wouldn't they? and we
could have friends. I'm not thinking about myself--just about Marylyn."

"You gals got each other. Meetin' th' women at Brannon means meetin' th'
men. _An' Ah won't hev it!_" His voice rose almost to a shout.

"I'll never speak to you about it again," she said. And her quiet
acceptance mollified him.

"M' gal, y' kain't think how Ah feel about them Yanks," he went on
tremulously. "An' Ah want y' t' promise me thet whether Ah'm 'live er
dead, y' 'll allus keep on you' own side of th' river."

She glanced up at him quickly. "Do you mean that, daddy?" she asked,
using the name he had borne in her babyhood.

"Ah _do!_ Ah do!"

"Then I promise." Her tone was sorrowful.

"Mar'lyn?"

The younger girl faced about slowly.

"D' _you_ promise?"

"Promise?" she repeated. "Yes,--I--I promise."

Dallas knew that the trip to the land-office was impossible unless
Lounsbury should chance along--which was unlikely, some weeks having
passed since his last visit. Undoubtedly were he to come, he would help
them. But would her father allow her to ask the storekeeper's aid?
Probably not.

"I'll tell Charley about it to-night," she said finally. "We just _got_
to find a way."

"What c'n _he_ do?" retorted her father. "Far's him's gitting a team's
concerned, we-all might's well look fer someone t' come right outen th'
sky."

Her determination to ask advice of the pariah was a natural one. The
morning that succeeded the night of the mules' terror, she had awakened
to find a reassuring explanation for their fear: In the growing light,
as the trumpet sounded reveille from the fort, she sprang up and looked
out expectantly. On the top of a drift in front of the door was a bundle
of sticks! A hard crust had formed during the night; and moccasin
tracks, leading up to the wood, and then pointing away again, were cast
in it with frozen clearness.

"That poor Indian!" she had exclaimed, in grateful relief.

Not once after his summoning before Colonel Cummings had The Squaw
forgotten daily to leave firewood at the shack. The evening of his
second trip across the Missouri, Dallas had lain in wait for him,
secreted under the dismantled schooner, which she had drawn into place
beside the door. And as, bringing his offering, he crossed the snow
softly and approached, the terrified mules again announced his coming,
and she hailed him.