is not my wife," he said, curtly, and then walked back and
sat down beside the old chief. "In fact, she isn't any relation to me, but
she's the nearest white woman I know to leave you with. If you want to go
farther, I reckon I can help you. Anyway, you come along across the line
to Sinna Ferry, and I feel sure you'll find friends there."

She looked at him unbelievingly. "She's used to being deceived," decided
Overton, as she watched him; but he stood her gaze without flinching and
smiled back at her.

"Do you live there?" she asked again, in that abrupt, uncivil way, and
turned her eyes to Akkomi, as though to read his countenance as well as
that of the white man,--a difficult thing, however, for the head of the
old man was again shrouded in his blanket, from which only the tip of his
nose and his pipe protruded.

In a far corner the squaw of Akkomi was crouched, her bead-like eyes
glittering with a watchful interest, as they turned from one to the other
of the speakers, and missed no tone or gesture of the two so strangely met
within her tepee. Overton noticed her once, and thought what a subject
for a picture Lyster would think the whole thing--at long range. He would
want to view it from the door of the tepee, and not from the interior.

But the questioning eyes of the girl were turned to him, and remembering
them, he said:

"Live there? Well, as much--a little more than I do anywhere else of late.
I am to go there in two days; and if you are ready to go, I will take you
and be glad to do it."

"You don't know anything about me," she protested.

He smiled, for her tone told him she was yielding.

"Oh, no--not much," he confessed, "but you can tell me, you know."

"I know I can, but I won't," she said, doggedly. "So I guess you'll just
move on down to the ferry without me. He knows, and he says I can live
here if I want to. I'm tired of the white people. A girl alone is as well
with the Indians. I think so, anyway, and I guess I'll try camping with
them. They don't ask a word--only what I tell myself. They don't even care
whether I have a name; they would give me one if I hadn't."

"A suitable name--and a nice Indian one--for you would be, 'The Water Rat'
or 'The Girl Who Swims.' Maybe," he added, "they will hunt you up one more
like poetry in books (the only place one finds poetry in Indians),
'Laughing Eyes,' or 'The One Who Smiles.' Oh, yes, they'll find you a name
fast enough. So will I, if you have no