she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the
lodge, and from a leather bag drew forth a horseshoe and looked at it,
murmuring to herself.

The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. "What is it, Mitiahwe?" she
asked.

"It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is
put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad
thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from
all the world, then it brings good-luck. _Hai-yai!_ I will put it over the
door, and then--" All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some
terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she rocked
her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But presently she got
to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the
horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin.

"O great Sun," she prayed, "have pity on me and save me. I cannot live
alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O
great One, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that he
will say, 'This is mine, body of my body,' and he will hear the cry and
will stay. O great Sun, pity me!"

The old woman's heart beat faster as she listened. The same thought was in
the mind of both. If there were but a child, bone of his bone, then
perhaps he would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return when
he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in the wilderness.

As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift Wing
said: "It is good. The white man's Medicine for a white man's wife. But if
there were the red man's Medicine too--"

"What is the red man's Medicine?" asked the young wife, as she smoothed
her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red
sash round her waist.

The old woman shook her head, a curious, half-mystic light in her eyes,
her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something. "It
is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the head.
I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there were no
white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman's breast there
hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red men were like
leaves in the forest--but it was a winter of winters ago, and the Medicine
Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child! When Long Hand comes, what
will Mitiahwe say to him?"

Miti