ack. How!" he said and turned away towards the gate.

Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death in their looks.
He saw. "My knife is sharp," he said. "The woman is brave. She shall
live--go and fight Yellow Hawk, or starve and die."

Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had
come to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food,
and the woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned
for more. Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into
their hands. With grunts of satisfaction they seized what she gave, and
thrust it into their mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked
on stern and immobile, but when at last she and the factor's wife sat
down before the braves with confidence and an air of friendliness, he
sat down also; yet, famished as he was, he would not touch the food. At
last Sally, realising his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a little
lump of pemmican and a biscuit, and with a grunt he took it from her
hands and ate it. Then, at his command a fire was lit, the pipe of peace
was brought out, and Sally and the factor's wife touched their lips to
it, and passed it on.

So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with Arrowhead and
his tribe by a woman without fear, whose life had seemed not worth a
minute's purchase; and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men went
forth to make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the Nettigon River. In this
wise had her influence spread in the land.

.......................

Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with
a shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon
him a sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally
understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm.

"Oh, Jim," she said playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You
hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!"

"I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in
his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could
see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and
there in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery
of eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman
riding towards the postriding hard.

"It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted
... I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I ha