rieda never looked up. The woman sidled up to Jean and Jack with a
wheedling expression on her broad, stupid face.

Jack and Jean paid no attention to her. They were making a pile of shiny
fish scales into a silver hill at their feet, as it was their part to
clean the trout, while Frieda did the cooking.

The Indian eyed the two girls doubtfully. She firmly believed that one
of them had helped the truant to escape, yet they had not stirred from
before her eyes, in the time when the runaway girl threw her off the
scent.

"You know where my girl is, you hide her from me," the woman said
accusingly.

Jean glanced at her in a bored fashion. "Will you please go away?" she
demanded. "We are busy. We do not want to talk to you. I told you that
we had never seen any Indian girl."

Frieda did not move, but her rosy cheeks burned a deeper red from the
heat of the flames.

The squaw waddled slowly out of sight. What did it matter if she had
not caught Olilie? The girl would soon have to return to the hut. She
could not live long alone out on the plains and when she came back she
should be taught her place. Olilie was only a squaw in spite of the
nonsense she had learned at the white people's school. She should do the
work and be the slave of the man chief, like all Indian girls had from
the beginning.

"Jean, Jack," Frieda hissed softly. She came over toward her cousin and
sister with the fish still sizzling and popping in her frying pan.

"Oh, do be careful, Frieda," Jean begged. Some of the hot fat sputtered
out of the pan into Jean's lap and she slid backwards off the rock where
she was seated.

But Jack saw that something unusual was the matter with Frieda.

"What in the world has happened to you, child? Your eyes are as big as
saucers!" she exclaimed.

Frieda set down her pan and though the Indian woman was now well out of
sight, she whispered a few words that made both girls jump to their
feet.

"Then there was an Indian girl all the time?" Jean murmured.

Frieda nodded. "We must find her," she argued quietly. "She slipped over
the side of the gorge not far from here, when no one was looking at her
except me. She can't be very far away for she was too tired to have gone
much further."

"All right, Frieda," Jack agreed. "We will look for the Indian princess
as soon as we have had our lunch. We must eat the fish first, it is so
brown and delicious. Really we will have more strength to search if we
have some