he lodge, stitching her
little moccasins or weaving her little baskets.

"My daughter!" he answered sternly. "My daughter--who is barely out of
her own cradle basket--give her to you, whose hands, are blood-dyed
with the killing of a score of my tribe? You ask for this thing?"

"I do not ask it," replied the young brave. "I demand it; I have seen
the girl and I shall have her."

The old chief sprang to his feet and spat out his refusal. "Keep your
victory, and I keep my girl-child," though he knew he was not only
defying his enemy, but defying death as well.

The Tulameen laughed lightly, easily. "I shall not kill the sire of my
wife," he taunted. "One more battle must we have, but your girl-child
will come to me."

Then he took his victorious way up the trail, while the old chief
walked with slow and springless step down into the canyon.

The next morning the chief's daughter was loitering along the heights,
listening to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over the
precipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls. Suddenly
she heard a slight rustle, as though some passing bird's wing had dipt
the air. Then at her feet there fell a slender, delicately shaped
arrow. It fell with spent force, and her Indian woodcraft told her it
had been shot to her, not at her. She started like a wild animal.
Then her quick eye caught the outline of a handsome, erect figure that
stood on the heights across the river. She did not know him as her
father's enemy. She only saw him to be young, stalwart and of
extraordinary, manly beauty. The spirit of youth and of a certain
savage coquetry awoke within her. Quickly she fitted one of her own
dainty arrows to the bow string and sent it winging across the narrow
canyon; it fell, spent, at his feet, and he knew she had shot it to
him, not at him.

Next morning, woman-like, she crept noiselessly to the brink of the
heights. Would she see him again--that handsome brave? Would he speed
another arrow to her? She had not yet emerged from the tangle of
forest before it fell, its faint-winged flight heralding its coming.
Near the feathered end was tied a tassel of beautiful ermine tails.
She took from her wrist a string of shell beads, fastened it to one of
her little arrows and winged it across the canyon, as yesterday.

The following morning before leaving the lodge she fastened the tassel
of ermine tails in her straight, black hair. Would he see them? But