heir coat of
tan, and she was all excitement. The blood of the explorer flowed in her
veins; her inheritance from hardy ancestors who had hewn their way
through trackless forests to found a new home in the wilderness; and the
very mention of exploring set her pulses to leaping wildly. Far back in
Sahwah's ancestry there was a strain of Indian blood, which, although it
had not been apparent in many of the descendents, had seemed to come
into its own in this twentieth century daughter of the Brewsters. Not in
looks especially, for Sahwah's hair was brown and not black, and fine
and soft as silk, and her features were delicately modeled; yet there
was something about her different from the other girls of her
acquaintance, something elusive and puzzling, which, for a better name
her intimates had called her "Laughing Water" expression. Then, too,
there was her passionate love for the woods and for all wild creatures,
and the almost uncanny way in which birds and chipmunks would come to
her even though they fled in terror at the approach of the other
Winnebagos. Was it any wonder that Robert Allison, seeing her for the
first time, should have exclaimed involuntarily, "Minnehaha, Laughing
Water"?

Thus Sahwah was in her element paddling up this lonely river winding
through unfamiliar forests, and in her vivid imagination she was
Sacajawea, accompanying Lewis and Clark on their famous exploring
expedition; and the gentle Onawanda turned into the mighty rolling
Columbia, and the friendly pine woods with its border of willows became
the trackless forest of the unknown northwest.

Late in the afternoon Jo Severance suddenly cried out, "Here we are!"
and called out to the paddlers to head the canoes toward the shore.

Glad to stretch their limbs after the long afternoon of sitting in the
canoes, the Winnebagos sprang out on to the rocks which lined the
water's edge, and drew the boats up after them. The place was, as Jo had
promised, seemingly made for them to camp in. High and dry above the
stream, sheltered by great towering pine trees, covered with a thick
carpet of pine needles, this little woodland chamber opened in the dense
tangle of underbrush which everywhere else grew up between the trees in
a heavy tangle. Down near the shore a clear little spring went tinkling
down into the river.

"Oh, what a cozy, cozy place!" exclaimed Migwan. "I never thought of
being cozy in the woods before--it's always been so wide and airy.