because he was first; and my Girl-Child
because she was the last. That equals everything."

They thought it did, delightfully: if they stayed awake long enough to
think at all. But when they were both asleep, and the sound of their
soft breathing echoed through the dusky tepee, Wahneenah took her seat
at its entrance, and began to sing low and softly, with a sweetness of
voice which rendered even their rudeness musical, the love songs of
her girlhood.

As she sang and gazed upward through the trees into the starlit sky,
an infinite peace stole over her. Indeed, the joy that possessed her
seemed almost startling to herself. All that was sad in her memories
dropped from them, and left but their happiness; while the present
closed about her as a delight that nothing could disturb. Her love for
the Sun Maid had become almost a passion with her, and for her
Dark-Eye there was ever an increasing and comprehending affection.

She remained so long, dreaming, remembering, and planning, that the
first grayness of the dawn came before she could go within and take
her own bit of sleep. But Muck-otey-pokee was always early astir; and
if for no other reason, because the dogs which thronged the settlement
would allow no quiet after daybreak. That morning they were unusually
restless.

Cried Wahneenah, rising suddenly, and now feeling somewhat the effects
of her late sitting:

"Can it be sun-up already? The beasts are wild this morning. I have
never heard them so deafening."

Nor had anybody else. There was no cessation in their barking.

"It's a regular 'bedlam,' isn't it? That's what the Fort mothers used
to say when there was target practice, and the children cheered the
shooters. What makes them bark so?" answered Gaspar.

Wahneenah shivered, and suggested:

"Run out and play. Eh? What's that? The Snake-Who-Leaps? So early,
and with the horses, too? But mind him not. Take the Sun Maid
out-of-doors, but keep close to the green before the lodge. Where
I can see you now and then, while I get breakfast ready."

Everybody was up; and more than one commented upon the strangeness of
the three horses being brought to the tepee so early.

The warning message which had come from the south, and had been
delivered to his chief by the Snake-Who-Leaps, on that dark night some
weeks before, was now to be verified. "What the red men have done to
the pale-faces, the pale-faces will now do to them. Retaliation and
revenge!"

Yet not