t, for the hoe cut into the earth with a vicious ring. But he
avoided her direct challenge.

"Guess I haven't a heap of regard for no Injuns nor squaws. I've no call
to. But I allow Wanaha's a good woman."

Just for a moment the girl's face became very serious.

"I'm glad you say that, Seth. I knew you wouldn't say anything else;
you're too generous. Wanaha is good. Do you know she goes to the Mission
because she loves it? She helps us teach the little papooses because she
believes in the 'God of the white folks,' she says. I know you don't like
me to see so much of her, but somehow I can't help it. Seth, do you
believe in foreboding?"

"Can't say I'd gamble a heap that aways."

"Well, I don't know, but I believe it's a good thing that Wanaha loves
me--loves us all. She has such an influence over people."

Seth looked up at last. The serious tone of the girl was unusual. But as
he said nothing, and simply went on with his work, Rosebud continued.

"Sometimes I can't understand you, Seth. I know, generally speaking, you
have no cause to like Indians, while perhaps I have. You see, I have
always known them. But you seem to have taken exception only to Little
Black Fox and Wanaha as far as I am concerned. You let me teach the
Mission children, you even teach them yourself, yet, while admitting
Wanaha's goodness, you get angry with me for seeing her. As for Little
Black Fox, he is the chief. He's a great warrior, and acknowledged by even
the agent and missionary to be the best chief the Rosebuds have ever had.
Quite different from his father."

"Guess that's so."

"Then why--may I not talk to them? And, oh, Seth"--the girl's eyes danced
with mischief--"he is such a romantic fellow. You should hear him talk in
English. He talks--well, he has much more poetry in him than you have."

"Which is mostly a form of craziness," observed Seth, quite unruffled.

"Well, I like craziness."

"Ah!"

Seth's occasional lapses into monosyllables annoyed Rosebud. She never
understood them. Now there came a gleam of anger into her eyes, and their
color seemed to have changed to a hard gray.

"Well, whether you like it or not, you needn't be so ill-tempered about
it."

Seth looked up in real astonishment at this unwarrantable charge, and his
dark eyes twinkled as he beheld Rosebud's own evident anger.

He shook his head regretfully, and cut out a bunch of weeds with his hoe.

"Guess I'm pretty mean," he said, implying that h