ed themselves, it was the way the
Indians diverted themselves.

Without a sound there came into Owen's view on the right an Indian girl.
He was at first taken by surprise at her coming over the moss of the
spring. The shaggy cliff, clothed, like the top of his cave, with
cedars, white birch, and pine, afforded no path to the beach in that
direction. All his clients approached by the lake margin at the left.

Then he noticed it was Blackbird, a Sac girl, who had been pointed out
to his critical eye the previous summer as a beauty. Owen admitted she
was not bad-looking for a squaw. Her burnished hair, which had got her
the name, was drawn down to cheeks where copper and vermilion infused
the skin with a wonderful sunset tint. She was neatly and precisely
dressed in the woman's skirt and jacket of her tribe, even her moccasins
showing no trace of the scramble she must have had down some secret
cliff descent in order to approach the cobbler unseen.

He greeted her with the contemptuous affability which an Irishman
bestows upon a heathen. Blackbird was probably a good communicant of
some wilderness mission, but this brought her no nearer to a son of
Ireland.

"Good-day to the quane! And what may she be wanting the day?"

Blackbird's eyes, without the snake-restlessness of her race, dwelt
unmoving upon him. Owen surmised she could not understand his or any
other kind of English, being accustomed to no tongue but her own, except
the French which the engages talked in their winter camps. She stood
upright as a pine without answering.

It flashed through him that there might be trouble in the village; and
Blackbird, having regard for him, as we think it possible any human
being may have for us, was there to bid him escape. With coldness
around the roots of his hair, he remembered the massacre at Fort
Michilimackinac--a spot almost in sight across the strait, where south
shore approaches north shore at the mouth of Lake Michigan. He laid down
his boot. His lips dropped apart, and with a hush of the sound--if such
a sound can be hushed--he imitated the Indian war-whoop.

Blackbird did not smile at the uncanny screech, but she relaxed her face
in stoic amusement, relieving Owen's tense breathing. There was no
plot. The tribes merely intended to draw their money, get as drunk
as possible, and depart in peace at the end of the month with various
outfits to winter posts.

"Begorra, but that was a narrow escape!" sighed Owen,