fussing over him. His attitude toward her
was wholly changed. Thinking of her as a white girl, he looked at her
with respect.

"No more slops," he said. "Bring me a good caribou steak and I'll say
thank you."

"You're to eat what Mother sends," she told him.

Lemoine had risen from the chair on which he had been sitting. He
stared at her, a queer look of puzzled astonishment in his eyes.
Jessie became aware of his gaze and flashed on him a look of
annoyance.

"Have you seen a ghost, Mr. Lemoine?" she asked.

"By gar, maybeso, Miss Jessie. The picture in the locket, it jus' lak
you--same hair, same eyes, same smile."

"What picture in what locket?"

"The locket I see at Whoop-Up, the one Pierre Roubideaux buy from old
Makoye-kin's squaw."

"A picture of a Blackfoot?"

"No-o. Maybe French--maybe from the 'Merican country. I do not know."

Whaley took the pipe from his mouth and sat up, the chill eyes in his
white face fixed and intent. "Go back to Whoop-Up, Lemoine. Buy
that locket and that ring for me from Pierre Roubideaux. See
Makoye-kin--and his squaw. Find out where she got it--and when. Run
down the whole story."

The trapper took off a fur cap and scratched his curly poll.
"Mais--pourquois? All that will take money, is it not so?"

"I'll let you have the money. Spend what you need, but account for it
to me afterward."

Jessie felt the irregular beat of a hammer inside her bosom. "What is
it you think, Mr. Whaley?" she cried softly.

"I don't know what I think. Probably nothing to it. But there's a
locket. We know that. With a picture that looks like you, Lemoine here
thinks. We'd better find out whose picture it is, hadn't we?"

"Yes, but--Do you mean that maybe it has something to do with me? How
can it? The sister of Stokimatis was my mother. Onistah is my cousin.
Ask Stokimatis. She knows. What could this woman of the picture be to
me?"

Jessie could not understand the fluttering pulse in her throat. She
had not doubted that her mother was a Blackfoot. All the romance of
her clouded birth centered around the unknown father who had died when
she was a baby. Stokimatis had not been very clear about that. She had
never met the man, according to the story she had told Sleeping Dawn.
Neither she nor those of her tribal group knew anything of him. Was
there a mystery about his life? In her childish dreams Jessie had
woven one. He was to her everything desirable, for he was the tie that
bound her