erstanding and kind act, neglect
and tenderness, reproof and praise, gentleness and impulse, anger and
caress,--to be set down in the everlasting record? Why must the Indian
always give way--Indian habits, Indian desires, the Indian way of doing
things, the Indian point of view, Indian food, Indian medicine? Was it
all bad, and only that which belonged to white life good?

"Look at your face in the glass, Pauline," she added at last. "You are
good-looking, but it isn't the good looks of the whites. The lodge of
a chieftainess is the place for you. There you would have praise and
honour; among the whites you are only a half-breed. What is the good?
Let us go back to the life out there beyond the Muskwat River--up
beyond. There is hunting still, a little, and the world is quiet, and
nothing troubles. Only the wild dog barks at night, or the wolf sniffs
at the door and all day there is singing. Somewhere out beyond the
Muskwat the feasts go on, and the old men build the great fires, and
tell tales, and call the wind out of the north, and make the thunder
speak; and the young men ride to the hunt or go out to battle, and build
lodges for the daughters of the tribe; and each man has his woman, and
each woman has in her breast the honour of the tribe, and the little
ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like a pocket of deerskin is every
house, warm and small and full of good things. Hai-yai, what is this
life to that! There you will be head and chief of all, for there is
money enough for a thousand horses; and your father was a white man, and
these are the days when the white man rules. Like clouds before the sun
are the races of men, and one race rises and another falls. Here you
are not first, but last; and the child of the white father and mother,
though they be as the dirt that flies from a horse's heels, it is before
you. Your mother is a Blackfoot."

As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses, the girl's mood changed,
and there came into her eyes a strange, dark look deeper than anger.
She listened with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in
her breast and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes
withdrew from the wild storm without and gravely settled on her mother's
face, and with the Indian woman's last words understanding pierced,
but did not dispel, the sombre and ominous look in her eyes. There was
silence for a moment, and then she spoke almost as evenly as her mother
had done.

"I w