"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