er
short, broad feet. Her eyes were soft and luminous, like an animal's when
it is content; but there was savage passion too in their dark depths.

"This is my mother," said the girl briefly. "I am Susie MacDonald."

"My name is Peter McArthur, madam."

The little man concealed his surprise as best he could, and bowed.

The girl, quick to note his puzzled expression, explained laconically:

"I'm a breed. My father was a white man. You're on the reservation when
you cross the crick."

Recovering himself, the stranger said politely:

"Ah, MacDonald--that good Scotch name is a very familiar one to me. I had
an uncle----"

"I go show dem where to turn de horses," interrupted the Indian woman, to
whom the conversation was uninteresting. So, without ceremony, she padded
away in her moccasins, drawing her blanket squaw-fashion across her face
as she waddled down the path.

At the mission the woman had obtained the rudiments of an education.
There, too, she had learned to cut and make a dress, after a crude,
laborious fashion, and had acquired the ways of the white people's
housekeeping. She was noted for the acumen which she displayed in
disposing of the crop from her extensive hay-ranch to the neighboring
white cattlemen; and MacDonald, the big, silent Scotch MacDonald who had
come down from the north country and married her before the reservation
priest, was given the credit for having instilled into her some of his own
shrewdness and thrift.

In the corral the Indian woman came upon Smith. He turned his head slowly
and looked at her. For a second, two, three seconds, or more, they looked
into each other's eyes. His gaze was confident, masterful, compelling;
hers was wondering, until finally she dropped her eyes in the submissive,
modest, half-shy way of Indian women.

Smith moistened his short upper lip with the tip of his tongue, while the
shadow of a smile lurked at the corner of his mouth. He turned to his
saddle, again, and without speaking, she watched him until he had gone
into the barn. His saddle lay on the ground, half covering his blankets.
Something in this heap caught the woman's eyes and held them. Swooping
forward, she caught a protruding corner between her thumb and finger and
pulled a gay, striped blanket from the rest. Lifting it to her nose, she
smelled it. Smith saw the act as he came out of the door, but there was
neither consternation nor fear in his face. Smith knew Indian women.

I