past Sault St. Marie, and made her way
across the portages to the Mississippi, and
so down to the sacred rock of St. Louis.
That was a merry place. Ninon had fault
to find neither with the wine nor the dances.
They were all that one could have desired,
and there was no limit to either of them.
But still, after a time, even this grew tire-
some to one of Ninon's spirit, and she took
the first opportunity to sail up the Missouri
with a certain young trapper connected with
the great fur company, and so found her-
self at Cainsville, with the blue bluffs rising
to the east of her, and the low white
stretches of the river flats undulating down
to where the sluggish stream wound its way
southward capriciously.

Ninon soon tired of her trapper. For
one thing she found out that he was a
coward. She saw him run once in a buffalo
fight. That was when the Pawnee stood
still with a blanket stretched wide in a gaudy
square, and caught the head of the mad
animal fairly in the tough fabric; his mus-
tang's legs trembled under him, but he did
not move, -- for a mustang is the soul of an
Indian, and obeys each thought; the Indian
himself felt his heart pounding at his ribs;
but once with that garment fast over the