ays serious and well ordered. Therefore, when the songs
became coarse he walked away and smoked his pipe alone, or talked with
Jim the Ute, whose serious and dignified silence was in vivid contrast.

Some way, coarse speech and ribald song brought up, by the power of
contrast, the pure, sweet faces of Mary and his sister Maud. Two or
three times in his boyhood he had come near to slaying pert lads who had
dared to utter coarse words in his sister's presence. There was in him
too much of the essence of the highest chivalry to permit such things.

It happened, therefore, that he spent much time with "Ute Jim," who was
a simple and loyal soul, thoughtful, and possessing a sense of humor
withal. Mose took great pleasure in sitting beside the camp fire with
this son of the plains, while he talked of the wild and splendid life of
the days before the white man came. His speech was broken, but Mose
pieced it out by means of the sign language, so graceful, so dignified,
and so dramatic, that he was seized with the fervid wish to acquire a
knowledge of it. This he soon did, and thereafter they might be seen at
any time of day signaling from side to side of the herd, the Indian
smiling and shaking his head when the youth made a mistake.

Jim believed in his new friend, and when questions brought out the
history of the dispossession of his people he grew very sorrowful. His
round cheeks became rigid and his eyes were turned away. "Injun no like
fight white man all time. Injun gotta fight. White man crowd Injun back,
back, no game, no rain, no corn. Injun heap like rivers, trees, all
same--white man no like 'um, go on hot plain, no trees, no mountains, no
game."

But he threw off these somber moods quickly, and resumed his stories of
himself, of long trips to the snowpeaks, which he seemed to regard in
the light of highest daring. The high mountains were not merely far from
the land of his people; they were mythic places inhabited by monstrous
animals that could change from beast to fowl, and talk--great, conjuring
creatures, whose powers were infinite in scope. As the red man struggled
forward in his story, attempting to define these conceptions, the heart
of the prairie youth swelled with a poignant sense of drawing near a
great mystery. The conviction of Jim's faith for the moment made him
more than half believe in the powers of the mountain people. Day by day
his longing for the "high country" grew.

At the first favorable m