"'Twas odour fled
As soon as shed,
'Twas morning's winged dream;
'Twas a light that ne'er can shine again
On life's dull stream."

Then, as Wasi held his pony, Ermi kissed her brave and rested her
slight little body against him with love speaking in every line of its
limp abandon.

II

Outside, the smouldering sun sank earthward in a drapery of blood-red.
In the tepee, the fierce dryness of the hot winds breathed on the baby
that lay dying by the open door.

The Indian women feared the measles more than any other plague, and so
Ermi had been alone all the days, save only for the medicine-man who
had come to her thrice. He would drive out the evil spirits who had
caused the sickness, but Ermi only shook her head and held little Ninon
the closer. Once, she had seen him sear the flesh of Cheneka with a
burning piece of touchwood, and he had sucked the blood from the breast
of Kon. Besides, Ermi was a Christian and worshipped always at the
shrine of the great white virgin.

The hours passed, horrible hours, and still in her loneliness and
parching anxiety she cried for the life of her baby, cried the prayers
of impotence to omnipotence. Already the baby-face was old and tired,
but the mother crooned and rocked her all through the night till, at
dawn, the wearied eyelids drooped over the darkened eyes for the last
time. The dove had found no rest for the sole of her foot.

Ermi knew where there lay a great stone in the coulee off by the river
bank. She would carry her baby thence and bury it under the stone,
safe from the grovelling of wolves.

Then she washed the tiny form and combed the tangles from the soft
hair, looping it back from the face with a band of scarlet. "After
all," she mused, "life has no beauty so wonderful as death."

And because it was the tribal belief that if a corpse were carried
through a door, the next person following would shortly die, Ermi put
Ninon through the window, for Wasi would come home soon and the dread
fate might fall on him.

Gathering the little clod of flesh in her arms and pressing it closely,
the dry-eyed mother set out on her journey across the wide-lying
plains. On and on she walked, trudge, trudge, trudge, under a brazen
sky that looked down pitiless and tearless.

"Oh! If Wasi were here," she thought. "He would carry the spade and I
would hold little Ninon only. If Wasi were here!"

The ground reflected heat to her weary soul and body, and