how you."

Susie quickly did as she was bid.

"De lemon bottle is de love-charm of de Sioux. One teaspoonful--no more,
Little Coyote's woman say. De other bottle is de bad medicine. Be careful.
Smith--make fool--of me--Susie." What else she would have said ended in a
gurgle. Her jaw dropped, and she died with her glazing eyes upon Susie's
face.

Susie pulled the gay Indian blanket gently over her mother's shoulders, as
if afraid she would be cold. Then she slipped a needle and some beads and
buckskin, to complete an unfinished moccasin, underneath the blanket. Her
mother was going on a long journey, and would want occupation. There were
no tears in Susie's eyes when she replaced the bottles and the skinning
knife with the discolored blade behind the mirror.

The wan little creature seemed to have no tears to shed. She was
unresponsive to Dora's broken words of sympathy, and the grub-liners'
awkward condolences--they seemed not to reach her heart at all. She heard
them without hearing, for her mind was chaos as she moved silently from
room to room, or huddled, a forlorn figure, on the bench where her mother
always had sat.

Breakfast was long since over and the forenoon well advanced when she
finally left the silent house and crept like the ghost of her spirited
self down the path to the stable and into the roomy stall where her stout
little cow-pony stood munching hay.

In her sorrow, the dumb animal was the one thing to which she turned. He
lifted his head when she went in, and threw his cropped ears forward,
while his eyes grew limpid as a horse's eyes will at the approach of some
one it knows well and looks to for food and affection.

They had almost grown up together, and the time Susie had spent on his
back, or with him in the corral or stall, formerly had been half her
waking hours. They had no fear of each other; only deep love and mutual
understanding.

"Oh, Croppy! Croppy!" her childish voice quavered. "Oh, Croppy, you're all
I've got left!" She slipped her arms around his thick neck and hid her
face in his mane.

He stopped eating and stood motionless while she clung to him, his ears
alert at the sound of the familiar voice.

"What _shall_ I do!" she wailed in an abandonment of grief.

In her inexperience, it seemed to Susie, that with her mother's death all
the world had come to an end for her. Undemonstrative as they were, and
meagre as had been any spoken words of affection, the bond of natural