ive defiance that always came into her
manner when the subject of her birth was referred to.

She did, later, over the camp-fire.

It is fortunate that desire and opportunity do not always march
together. The constable and Morse had both been dead men if Bully West
could have killed with a wish. Sleeping Dawn would have been on the
road to an existence worse than death. Instead, they sat in front of
the coals of buffalo chips while the big smuggler and his companions
rode away from an ignominious field of battle.

When the constable and his prisoner had first struck camp, there had
been two of them. Now there were six. For in addition to Jessie McRae,
the Blackfoot, and Barney, another had come out of the night and
hailed them with a "Hello, the camp!" This last self-invited guest was
Brad Stearns, who had not ridden to Whoop-Up as he had announced, but
had watched events from a distance on the chance that he might be of
help to Tom Morse.

Jessie agreed with Beresford that she must stay in camp till morning.
There was nothing else for her to do. She could not very well ride the
night out with Onistah on the road back to the fort. But she stayed
with great reluctance.

Her modesty was in arms. Never before had she, a girl alone, been
forced to make camp with five men as companions, all but one of them
almost strangers to her. The experience was one that shocked her sense
of fitness.

She was troubled and distressed, and she showed it. Her impulsiveness
had swept her into an adventure that might have been tragic, that
still held potentialities of disaster. For she could not forget the
look on West's face when he had sworn to get even with her. This man
was a terrible enemy, because of his boldness, his evil mind, and his
lack of restraining conscience.

Yet even now she could not blame herself for what she had done. The
constable's life was at stake. It had been necessary to move swiftly
and decisively.

Sitting before the fire, Sleeping Dawn began to tell her story. She
told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with
Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an
explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly a thing.

"Onistah's mother is my mother," she said. "When I was a baby my own
mother died. Stokimatis is her sister. I do not know who my father
was, but I have heard he was an American. Stokimatis took me to her
tepee and I lived there with her and Onistah till