on the prairies far away, where only the coyote or the
prairie-hen saw, her head drooped, and her eyes grew heavy with pain and
sombre protest. Once in an agony of loneliness, and cruelly hurt by a
conspicuous slight put upon her at the Portage by the wife of the Reeve
of the town, who had daughters twain of pure white blood got from behind
the bar of a saloon in Winnipeg, she had thrown open her window at night
with the frost below zero, and stood in her thin nightdress, craving the
death which she hoped the cold would give her soon. It had not availed,
however, and once again she had ridden out in a blizzard to die, but
had come upon a man lost in the snow, and her own misery had passed from
her, and her heart, full of the blood of plainsmen, had done for another
what it would not do for itself. The Indian in her had, with strange,
sure instinct, found its way to Portage la Drome, the man with both
hands and one foot frozen, on her pony, she walking at his side, only
conscious that she had saved one, not two, lives that day.

Here was another such day, here again was the storm in her heart which
had driven her into the plains that other time, and here again was that
tempest of white death outside.

"You have no sense. You are not white. They will not have you. Sit
down--"

The words had fallen on her ears with a cold, deadly smother. There came
a chill upon her which stilled the wild pulses in her, which suddenly
robbed the eyes of their brightness and gave a drawn look to the face.

"You are not white. They will not have you, Pauline." The Indian mother
repeated the words after a moment, her eyes grown still more gloomy;
for in her, too, there was a dark tide of passion moving. In all the
outlived years this girl had ever turned to the white father rather than
to her, and she had been left more and more alone. Her man had been
kind to her, and she had been a faithful wife, but she had resented the
natural instinct of her half-breed child, almost white herself and with
the feelings and ways of the whites, to turn always to her father, as
though to a superior guide, to a higher influence and authority. Was
not she herself the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through
generations of rulers and warriors? Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot
blood in the girl's veins? Must only the white man's blood be reckoned
when they made up their daily account and balanced the books of their
lives, credit and debtor,--misund