was
a mere trick to deceive us. To make sure of him we should have watched
the west prairie and gone up the river for his real landing place. How
he lived I do not know. An Indian can live on air and faith in a
promise, or hatred of a foe. At last he lulled even our suspicion to
sleep.

"Ask the priest what to do," I suggested to O'mie when we grew ashamed
of our spying. "They are together so much the rascal looks and walks
like him. See him on annuity day and tell him we feel like chicken
thieves and kidnappers."

O'mie obeyed me to the letter, and ended with the query to the good
Father:

"Now phwat should a couple of young sleuth-hounds do wid such a dacent
good Injun?"

Father Le Claire's reply stunned the Irish boy.

"He just drew himself up a mile high an' more," O'mie related to me,
"just stood up like the angel av the flamin' sword, an' his eyes blazed
a black, consumin' fire. 'Watch him,' says the praist, 'for God's sake,
watch him. Don't ask me again phwat to do. I've told you twice. Thirty
years have I lived and labored with his kind. I know them.' An' then,"
O'mie went on, "he put both arms around me an' held me close as me own
father might have done, somewhere back, an' turned an' left me. So
there's our orders. Will ye take 'em?"

I took them, but my mind was full of queries. I did not trust the
Indian, and yet I had no visible reason to doubt his sincerity.

CHAPTER VI

WHEN THE HEART BEATS YOUNG

A patch of green sod 'neath the trees brown and bare,
A smell of fresh mould on the mild southern air,
A twitter of bird song, a flutter, a call,
And though the clouds lower, and threaten and fall--
There's Spring in my heart!

--BERTA ALEXANDER GARVEY.

When the prairies blossomed again, and the Kansas springtime was in its
daintiest green, when a blur of pink was on the few young orchards in
the Neosho Valley, and the cottonwoods in the draws were putting forth
their glittering tender leaves--in that sweetest time of all the year, a
new joy came to me. Most girls married at sixteen in those days, and
were grandmothers at thirty-five. Marjie was no longer a child. No
sweeter blossom of young womanhood ever graced the West. All Springvale
loved her, except Lettie Conlow. And Cam Gentry summed it all up in his
own quaint way, brave old Cam fighting all the battles of the war over
again on the veranda of the Cambridge House, since his defective range
of vision kept him from the