gainst the protruding root.

They would have been silent that evening if it had not been for Zavier.
His mood was less merry than usual, but a stream of frontier anecdote
and story flowed from him, that held them listening with charmed
attention. His foreign speech interlarded with French words added to
the picturesqueness of his narratives, and he himself sitting
crosslegged on his blanket, his hair hanging dense to his shoulders,
his supple body leaning forward in the tension of a thrilling climax,
was a fitting minstrel for these lays of the wild.

His final story was that of Antoine Godin, one of the classics of
mountain history. Godin was the son of an Iroquois hunter who had been
brutally murdered by the Blackfeet. He had become a trapper of the
Sublette brothers, then mighty men of the fur trade, and in the
expedition of Milton Sublette against the Blackfeet in 1832 joined the
troop. When the two bands met, Godin volunteered to hold a conference
with the Blackfeet chief. He chose as his companion an Indian of the
Flathead tribe, once a powerful nation, but almost exterminated by wars
with the Blackfeet. From the massed ranks of his warriors the chief
rode out for the parley, a pipe of peace in his hand. As Godin and the
Flathead started to meet him, the former asked the Indian if his piece
was charged, and when the Flathead answered in the affirmative told him
to cock it and ride alongside.

Midway between the two bands they met. Godin clasped the chief's hand,
and as he did so told the Flathead to fire. The Indian levelled his
gun, fired, and the Blackfeet chief rolled off his horse. Godin
snatched off his blanket and in a rain of bullets fled to the Sublette
camp.

"And so," said the voyageur with a note of exultation in his voice,
"Godin got revenge on those men who had killed his father."

For a moment his listeners were silent, suffering from a sense of
bewilderment, not so much at the story, as at Zavier's evident approval
of Godin's act.

It was Susan who first said in a low tone, "What an awful thing to do!"
This loosened Bella's tongue, who lying in the opening of her tent had
been listening and now felt emboldened to express her opinion,
especially as Glen, stretched on his face nearby, had emitted a snort
of indignation.

"Well, of all the wicked things I've heard since I came out here that's
the worst."

Zavier shot a glance at them in which for one unguarded moment, race
antagoni