old eyes which had seen so much of the
world.

"Very likely we'll see the minister's wife there," said he, as they
rode forward, "and if so, it will be worth your while to take special
note of her. St. John Mathews, the Episcopalian minister over there at
the mission--those white buildings there among the trees--is a
full-blooded Crow. One of the pioneer missionaries took him up and
sent him back East to school, where in time he entered the ministry
and married this white girl. She was a college girl, I've been told,
glamoured by the romance of Mathews' life. Well, it was soon over."

The colonel sighed, and fell silent. The captain, feeling that it was
intended that he should, made polite inquiry.

"The trouble is that Mathews is an Indian out of his place," the
colonel resumed. "He returned here twenty years or so ago, and took up
his work among his people. But as he advanced toward civilization, his
wife began to slip back. Little by little she adopted the Indian ways
and dress, until now you couldn't tell her from a squaw if you were to
meet her for the first time. She presents a curious psychological
study--or perhaps biological example of atavism, for I believe there's
more body than soul in the poor creature now. It's nature maintaining
the balance, you see. He goes up; she slips back.

"If she's there, she'll be squatting among the squaws, waiting to
carry home her husband's allotment of warm, bloody beef. She doesn't
have to do it, and it shames and humiliates Mathews, too, even though
they say she cuts it up and divides it among the poorer Indians. She's
a savage; her eyes sparkle at the sight of red meat."

They rounded the agency buildings and came upon an open meadow in
which the slaughterhouses stood at a distance from the road. Here,
in the grassy expanse, the Indians were gathered, waiting the
distribution of the meat. The scene was barbarically animated. Groups
of women in their bright dresses sat here and there on the grass, and
apart from them in gravity waited old men in moccasins and blankets
and with feathers in their hair. Spry young men smoked cigarettes
and talked volubly, garbed in the worst of civilization and the
most useless of savagery.

One and all they turned their backs upon the visitors, the nearest
groups and individuals moving away from them with the impassive
dignity of their race. There is more scorn in an Indian squaw's back,
turned to an impertinent stranger, than in the f