ere will not be many
anniversaries." Laughing, she poured out another glass of liqueur for
him.

"Well, now, p'r'aps you're right, and so the only thing to do is not to
keep coming, but to stay--stay right where _you_ are."

The Indian woman could not see her daughter's face, which was turned to
the fire, but she herself smiled at John Alloway, and nodded her head
approvingly. Here was the cure for her own trouble and loneliness. Pauline
and she, who lived in different worlds, and yet were tied to each other by
circumstances they could not control, would each work out her own destiny
after her own nature, since John Alloway had come a-wooing. She would go
back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain at the Portage, a white woman
with her white man. She would go back to the smoky fires in the huddled
lodges; to the venison stew and the snake dance; to the feasts of the
medicine-men, and the long sleeps in the summer days, and the winter's
tales, and be at rest among her own people; and Pauline would have revenge
of the wife of the prancing Reeve, and perhaps the people would forget who
her mother was.

With these thoughts flying through her sluggish mind, she rose and moved
heavily from the room, with a parting look of encouragement at Alloway, as
though to say, a man that is bold is surest.

With her back to the man, Pauline watched her mother leave the room, saw
the look she gave Alloway. When the door was closed she turned and looked
Alloway in the eyes.

"How old are you?" she asked, suddenly.

He stirred in his seat nervously. "Why, fifty, about," he answered, with
confusion.

"Then you'll be wise not to go looking for anniversaries in blizzards,
when they're few at the best," she said, with a gentle and dangerous
smile.

"Fifty--why, I'm as young as most men of thirty," he responded, with an
uncertain laugh. "I'd have come here to-day if it had been snowing
pitchforks and chain-lightning. I made up my mind I would. You saved my
life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the moles if it wasn't for
you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a
storm--seem to know their way by instinct. You, too--why, I bin on the
plains all my life, and was no better than a baby that day; but you--why,
you had Piegan in you--why, yes--"

He stopped short for a moment, checked by the look in her face, then went
blindly on: "And you've got Blackfoot in you, too; and you just felt your
way through the