she had said was right, Nevil Steyne encouraged Little
Black Fox. She wondered, and was apprehensive. Nevertheless, she went on
with her work. The royal blood of her race was strong in her. She had
much of the stoicism which is, perhaps, the most pronounced feature of her
people. It was no good saying more than she had said. If she saw necessity
she would do, and not talk.

She was still in the midst of her work when a sound caught her ear which
surely no one else could have heard. In response she went to the door. A
rider, still half a mile away, was approaching. She went back to her
washing-up, smiling. She had recognized the rider even at that distance.
Therefore she was in nowise surprised when, a few minutes later, she heard
a bright, girlish voice hailing her from without.

"Wana, Wana!" The tone was delightfully imperious. "Why don't you have
some place to tie a horse to?"

It was Rosebud. Wanaha had expected her, for it was the anniversary of her
coming to White River Farm, and the day Ma Sampson had allotted for her
birthday.

Wanaha went out to meet her friend. This greeting had been made a hundred
times, on the occasion of every visit Rosebud made to the woman's humble
home. It was a little joke between them, for there was a large iron hook
high up on the wall, just out of the girl's reach, set there for the
purpose of tying up a horse. The squaw took the girl's reins from her
hands, and hitched them to the hook.

"Welcome," she said in her deep voice, and held out a hand to be shaken
as white folk shake hands, not in the way Indians do it.

"What is it I must say to you?" she went on, in a puzzled way. "Oh, I
know. 'Much happy return.' That is how you tell me the last time you
come."

The squaw's great black eyes wore their wonderful soft look as they gazed
down upon her visitor. It was a strange contrast they made as they stood
there in the full light of the summer afternoon sun.

Both were extremely handsome of figure, though the Indian woman was more
natural and several inches taller. But their faces were opposite in every
detail. The squaw was dark, with clear velvety skin, and eyes black and
large and deeply luminous; she had a broad, intelligent forehead over
which her straight black hair fell from a natural centre parting, and was
caught back from her face at about the level of her mouth with two bows of
deep red braid. Her features might have been chiseled by a sculptor, they
were so perfect