Loseis shook her head. "Go through the ice with his team."

"Under the water--my father," murmured Bela.

She turned on her mother accusingly. "You have good white husband, and
you take Charley after!"

"My mother make me," Loseis said with sad stolidity.

Bela pondered on these matters, filled with a deep excitement. Her
mother kneaded the dough.

"I half a white woman," the girl murmured at last, more to herself
than the other. "That is why I strange here."

Again her mother looked at her intently, presaging another disclosure.
"Me, my father a white man too," she said in her abrupt way. "It is
forgotten now."

Bela stared at her mother, breathing quickly.

"Then--I 'most white!" she whispered, with amazed and brightening
eyes. "Now I understand my heart!" she suddenly cried aloud. "Always I
love the white people, but I not know. Always I ask Musq'oosis tell me
what they do. I love them because they live nice. They not pigs like
these people. They are my people! All is clear to me!" She rose.

"What you do?" asked Loseis anxiously.

"I will go to my people!" cried Bela, looking away as if she envisaged
the whole white race.

The Indian mother raised her eyes in a swift glance of passionate
supplication--but her lips were tight. Bela did not see the look.

"I go talk to Musq'oosis," she said. "He tell me all to do."

CHAPTER II

MUSQ'OOSIS ADVISES

The village of the Fish-Eaters was built in a narrow meadow behind a
pine grove and the little river. It was a small village of a dozen
teepees set up in a rough semicircle open to the stream.

This stream (Hah-Wah-Sepi they call it) came down from the Jack-Knife
Mountains to the north, and after passing the village, rounded a point
of the pines, traversed a wide sand-bar and was received into Caribou
Lake.

The opposite bank was heavily fringed with willows. Thus the village
was snugly hidden between the pines and the willows, and one might
have sailed up and down the lake a dozen times without suspecting its
existence. In this the Indians followed their ancient instinct. For
generations there had been no enemies to hide from.

It was at the end of May; the meadow was like a rug of rich emerald
velvet, and the willows were freshly decked in their pale leafage. The
whole scene was mantled with the exquisite radiance of the northern
summer sun. Children and dogs loafed and rolled in aimless ecstasy,
and the whole people sat at the teepee opening