"Tom thinks you hate him and he won't force himself on
your generosity."

"Oh!" She seemed to be considering that.

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Hate him."

She felt a flush burning beneath the dusky brown of her cheeks. "If
you knew what he'd done to me--"

"Perhaps I do," he said, very gently.

Her dark eyes studied him intently. "He told you?"

"No, one hears gossip. He hates himself because of it. Tom's white,
Jessie."

"And I'm Indian. Of course that does make a difference. If he'd had a
white girl whipped, you couldn't defend him," she flamed.

"You know I didn't mean that, little pal." His sunny smile was
disarming. "What I mean is that he's sorry for what he did. Why not
give him a chance to be friends?"

"Well, we gave him a chance to-night, didn't we? And he chose not to
take it. What do you want me to do--go and thank him kindly for having
me whipped?"

Beresford gave up with a shrug. He knew when he had said enough. Some
day the seed he had dropped might germinate.

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to work a W.B. on that case?" he asked
with friendly impudence. "Then if I lost it, whoever found it could
return it."

"I don't give presents to people who lose them," she parried.

Her dancing eyes were very bright as they met his. She loved the trim
lines of his clean beautiful youth and the soul expressed by them.

Matapi-Koma waddled into the room and the Mounted Policeman
transferred his attention to her. She weighed two hundred twelve
pounds, but was not sensitive on the subject. Beresford claimed
anxiously that she was growing thin.

The Indian woman merely smiled on him benignantly. She liked him, as
all women did. And she hoped that he would stay in the country and
marry Sleeping Dawn.

CHAPTER XX

ONISTAH READS SIGN

McRae fitted Jessie's snowshoes.

"You'll be hame before the dark, lass," he said, a little anxiously.

"Yes, Father."

The hunter turned to Onistah. "She's in your care, lad. Gin the
weather changes, or threatens to, let the traps go and strike for the
toon. You're no' to tak chances."

"Back assam weputch (very early)," promised the Blackfoot.

He was proud of the trust confided to him. To him McRae was a great
man. Among many of the trappers and the free traders the old Scot's
word was law. They came to him with their disputes for settlement and
abided by his decisions. For Angus was not only the patriarch of the
clan, if such a loose confederation of