doctor sufficiently to get his opinion.

"No, she will not die! Great bit of stuff! Better she should die,
perhaps! But can't say yet for two weeks. Now remember," he added
sharply, looking into The Duke's woe-stricken face, "her spirits must be
kept up. I have lied most fully and cheerfully to them inside; you must
do the same," and the doctor strode away, calling out:

"Joe! Here, Joe! Where is he gone? Joe, I say! Extraordinary selection
Providence makes at times; we could have spared that lazy half-breed
with pleasure! Joe! Oh, here you are! Where in thunder--" But here the
doctor stopped abruptly. The agony in the dark face before him was too
much even for the bluff doctor. Straight and stiff Joe stood by the
horse's head till the doctor had mounted, then with a great effort he
said:

"Little miss, she go dead?"

"Dead!" called out the doctor, glancing at the open window. "Why,
bless your old copper carcass, no! Gwen will show you yet how to rope a
steer."

Joe took a step nearer, and lowering his tone said:

"You speak me true? Me man, Me no papoose." The piercing black eyes
searched the doctor's face. The doctor hesitated a moment, and then,
with an air of great candor, said cheerily:

"That's all right, Joe. Miss Gwen will cut circles round your old cayuse
yet. But remember," and the doctor was very impressive, "you must make
her laugh every day."

Joe folded his arms across his breast and stood like a statue till the
doctor rode away; then turning to us he grunted out:

"Him good man, eh?"

"Good man," answered The Duke, adding, "but remember, Joe, what he told
you to do. Must make her laugh every day."

Poor Joe! Humor was not his forte, and his attempt in this direction
in the weeks that followed would have been humorous were they not so
pathetic. How I did my part I cannot tell. Those weeks are to me now
like the memory of an ugly nightmare. The ghostly old man moving out
and in of his little daughter's room in useless, dumb agony; Ponka's
woe-stricken Indian face; Joe's extraordinary and unusual but loyal
attempts at fun-making grotesquely sad, and The Duke's unvarying and
invincible cheeriness; these furnish light and shade for the picture my
memory brings me of Gwen in those days.

For the first two weeks she was simply heroic. She bore her pain without
a groan, submitted to the imprisonment which was harder than pain with
angelic patience. Joe, The Duke and I carried out our instructions w