e school they have taught me that a
girl is a boy's equal. I will not, because I am a girl, be a slave.
Please, please go." The Indian girl looked not at her mother, but at
Josef, the Indian boy. He kept his head down and mumbled something that
only Laska and Olilie could understand.

Laska pointed toward the girl. Then her eyes held her son. "Take her to
the tepee of her own people," she commanded. "I know the laws of the
white race are many and strange, but they take not the child from her
mother, while she is yet young."

Josef went toward Olilie, but Jean's body covered her and he did not
dare to thrust the white girl aside.

Frieda flung herself half way out the open window. In front of the ranch
was a grove of cottonwood trees, to one side ran a long, winding creek.
There was no one in sight, even their watch dog had followed Jack and
Jim across the range.

Jean was trying bribery and corruption. She had slipped her hand in her
pocket and brought out two bright silver dollars. She held one up before
the boy, the other before old Laska. "I will give you these if you will
leave the girl with us for a few days longer," she suggested.

The Indian boy did not lift his hand. He was gazing at the figure of his
sister in the chair. "I no take her, she sick," he said. "I no want her
to work for me. It is Laska who make her. She not like other Indian
girl. She different somehow. She read books. She talk like teachers at
school."

Laska seized the boy by the arm and shook him roughly. "You no talk
foolish," she declared. "You bring girl home. We take not white money.
Always you try to make the Indian sell big things for little."

"Oh, if somebody would only come to help us," Frieda thought
despairingly. She saw that Josef had picked Olilie up in his arms. She
felt like Sister Anne in the dreadful story of Bluebeard. If she could
see a little cloud of dust arising somewhere down the long road that led
through the trees from the far trail of the plains, she knew that help
would come to them! If only she could catch sight of one of the cowboys
returning to the ranch!

Frieda did spy a little dust along the trail on the upper side of the
creek. She seized a white scarf from the table near by and waved it
frantically out the window. "Help! Help! Jim! Jack! Somebody come quick!
We need you!" she cried.

The Indian boy and woman waited, puzzled and alarmed by the noise that
Frieda was making.

Frieda saw a rider catch