At just what time these two waifs of the woods appeared in camp even Forty-nine could not tell. They were first seen with the Indian woman who went about among the miners, picking up bread and bits of coin by dancing, singing and telling fortunes. These two Indian women were great liars, and rogues altogether. I need not add that they were partly civilized.

The little girl had been taught to dance and sing, and was quite a source of revenue to the two Indian women, who had perhaps bought or stolen the children. As for the boy—poor stunted, starved little thing—he hung on to his sister's tattered dress all the time with his little red hand, wherever she went and whatever she did. He was her shadow; and he was at that time little more than a shadow in any way.

Sometimes men pitied the little girl, and gave very liberally. They tried to find out something about her past life; for although she was quite the color of the Indian, she had regular features, and at times her poor pinched face was positively beautiful. The two children looked as if they had been literally stunted in their growth from starvation and hardship.

Once a good-hearted old miner had bribed the squaws to let the children come to his cabin and get something to eat. They came, and while they were gorging themselves, the boy sitting close up to the girl all the time, and looking about and back over his shoulder and holding on to her dress, this man questioned her about her life and history. She did not like to talk; indeed, she talked with difficulty at first, and her few English words fell from her lips in broken bits and in strange confusion. But at length she began to speak more clearly as she proceeded with her story, and became excited in its narration. Then she would stop and seem to forget it all. Then she went on, as if she was telling a dream. Then there would be another long pause, and confusion, and she would stammer on in the most wild and incoherent fashion, till the old miner became quite impatient, and thought her as big an imposter as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them each a loaf of bread, and told them they could go back to their lodge. This lodge consisted of a few poles set up in wigwam fashion, and covered with skins and old blankets and birch. A foul, ugly place it was, but in this wigwam lived two Indian women and these two children.

Men, or rather beasts—no, beasts are decent creatures; well then, monsters, full of bad rum, would prowl about this wretched lodge at night, and their howls, mixed with those of the savages, whom they had made also drunk, kept up a state of things frightful to think of in connection with these two sensitive, starving little waifs of the woods.

Who were they, and where did they come from? Sometimes these children would start up and fly from the lodge at night, and hide away in the brush like hunted things, and only steal back at morning when all was still. At such times the girl would wrap her little brother (if he was her brother) in her own scant rags, and hold him in her arms as he slept.

One night, while some strange Indians were lodging there, a still more terrible scene transpired in this dreadful little den than had yet been conceived. The two children fled as usual into the darkness, back into the deep woods. Shots were heard, and then a death-yell that echoed far up and down the canyon. Then there were cries, shrieks of women, as if they were being seized and borne away. Fainter and fainter grew their cries; further and further, down on the high ledge of the canyon in the darkness, into the deep wood, they seemed to be borne. And at last their cries died away altogether.

The next morning a dead Indian was found at the door of the empty lodge. But the women and the children were nowhere to be seen. Some said the Indian Agent's men had come to take the Indians away, and that the man resisting had been shot, while the women and children were taken to the Reservation, where they belonged. But there was a darker story, and told under the breath, and not spoken loud. Let it be told under the breath, and briefly here, also. Some drunken wretches had shot the Indians, carried the women down to the dark woods above the deep swollen river, and then, after the most awful orgies ever chronicled, murdered them and sunk their bodies in the muddy river.

It was nearly a week after that the two children stole down from the wooded hill-side into the trail, where old Forty-nine found them on his return from work. They were so weak they could not speak or cry out for help. They could only reach their little hands and implore help, as, timid and frightened, they tottered towards this first human being they had dared to face for a whole week.

The strong man hesitated a moment; they looked so frightful he wanted to escape from their presence. But his grand, noble nature came to the surface in a second; and dropping his pick and pan in the trail, he caught up the two children, and in a moment more was, with one in each arm, rushing down the trail to his cabin. He met some men, and passed others. They all looked at him with wonder. One even laughed at him.

And it is hard to comprehend this. There were good men—good in a measure; men who would have gallantly died to save a woman—men who were true men on points of honor; yet men who could not think of even being civil to an Indian, or any one with a bit of Indian blood in his veins. Is our government responsible for this? I do not say so. I only know that it exists; a hatred, a prejudice, more deeply seated and unreasonable than ever was that of the old slave-dealer for the black man.

Forty-nine did not return to his tunnel the next day, nor yet the next. This cabin, wretched as it became in after years when he had fallen into evil habits, had then plenty to eat, and there the starved little beings ate as they had never eaten before.

At first the little boy would steal and hide away bread while he ate at the table. The first night, after eating all he could, he slept with both his pockets full and a chunk up his sleeve besides.

This boy was never a favorite. He was so weak, so dependent on his sister. It seemed as if he had been at one time frightened almost to death, and had never quite gotten over it. And so Forty-nine took most kindly to the girl, and they were soon fast friends. Yet ever and always her shadow, the little boy, whom Forty-nine named Johnny, kept at her side—as I have said before; his little red hand reached out and clutching at her tattered dress.

After a few weeks the girl began to tell strange, wild stories to the old man. But observing that Forty-nine doubted these, as the other man had, she called them dreams, and so would tell him these wild and terrible dreams of the desert, of blood, of murder and massacre, till the old man himself, as the girl shrank up to him in terror, became almost frightened. He did not like to hear these dreams, and she soon learned not to repeat them.

One evening a passing miner stopped, placed a broad hand on either door-jamb, and putting his great head in at the open door, asked how the little "copper-colored pets" got on.

"Pard," answered Forty-nine, kindly, and with a nod of the head back toward the children playing in the corner, "they are not coppers; no, they are not. I tell you that girl is not copper, but gold. Yes she is, Pard; she is twenty carats."

"Twenty carats gold! Well, Twenty Carats, come here! Come here, Carats," called out the big head at the door.

The girl came forward, and a big hand fell down from the door-jamb on her bushy head of hair, and the man was pleased as he looked down into the uplifted face. And so he called her "Carats," and that became her name.

Other passing miners stopped to look in at the open door where the big head had looked and talked to the timid girl, and misunderstanding the name, they called her Carrie; and Carrie she was called ever afterwards.

But the boy who had been so thin, soon grew so fat and chubby that some one named him "Stumps." There was no good trying to get rid of that name. He looked as though his name ought to be Stumps, and Stumps it was, in spite of the persistent efforts of old Forty-nine to keep the name in use which he had given him. And this was all that Forty-nine or any one could tell of these two children.

And now, how beautiful Carrie had grown by the time the leaves turned brown! Often Dosson saw her hovering about the cabin of old Forty-nine, flitting through the woods with her brother, or walking leisurely with Logan on the hill down the dim old Indian trail.

Mother Nature has her golden wedding once a year, and all the world is invited. She has many gala days, too, besides, and she celebrates them with songs and dances of delight. In the full bosomed, teeming, jocund Spring, I have seen the trees lean together and rustle their leaves in whisperings of love. I have seen them reach their long strong arms to each other, and intertwine them as if in fond affection, as the bland, warm winds, coming up from the South, blew over them and warmed their hearts of oak—old trees, too, gnarled and knotted—old fellows that had bobbed their heads together through many and many a Spring; that had leaned their lofty and storm-stained tops together through many and many a Winter; that had stood, like mighty soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, in friendships knit through many centuries. The birds sing and flutter, fly in and out of the dark deep canopies of green, build nests, and make love in myriads. How the squirrels run and chatter and frisk, and fly from branch to branch, with their bushy tails tossing in the warm wind! Under foot, ten thousand tall strange flowers and weeds and long spindled grasses grow, and reach up and up, as if to try to touch the sunlight above the tops of the oak and ash and pine and fir and cedar and maple and cherry and sycamore and spruce and tamarack, and all these that grow in common confusion here and shut out the sun from the earth as perfectly as if all things dwelt forever in cloudland.

The cabin of old Forty-nine was very modest; it hid away in the canyon as if it did not wish to be seen at all. And it was right; for verily it was scarcely presentable. It was an old cabin, too, almost as old as little "Carats," if indeed any one could tell how old she was. But it, unlike herself, seemed to be growing tired and weary of the world. She had been growing up as it had been growing down. The moss was gathering all over the round, rough logs on the outside, and the weeds and wild vines each year grew still more ambitious to get quite to the top of the cabin, and peep down into the mysterious crater of a chimney that forever smoked in a mournful and monotonous sort of way, as if watchers were there—Vestal virgins, who dared not let their fires perish, on penalty of death.

"Drunken, wretched, cracked and crazy old Forty-nine," the camp said, "he can never build a new cabin, for he can't stay sober long enough to cut down a tree." And the camp told the ugly truth.

"Why don't Forty-nine build a new cabin?" asked Gar Dosson one day, as he passed that way, with a string of fish in his hand and a coon on his back.

"Poor dear Forty-nine's got the shakes so he can't get time. It takes him all the time to shake, and it takes all his money to buy his ager medicine. Poor dear old Forty-nine!" and the girl seemed to get a cinder or something in her eye.*****

As the sun settled low, one afternoon, and cast long, creeping shadows over the flowery land—shadows that lay upon and crept along the ground, as if they were weary of the day, and would like to lie there and sleep, and sleep, forever—the stealthy step of a man was heard approaching the old cabin. There was something of the tiger in the man's movements, and it was clear that his mission, whatever it was, was not a mission of peace.*****

The man stands out in the clearing of the land before the cabin, and peers right and left up the trail and down the trail, and then leans and listens. Then he takes a glance back over his shoulder at his companion and follower, Gar Dosson, and being sure that he too is on the alert and close on his heels, he steps forward. Again the man leans and listens, but seeing no signs of life and hearing no sound, he straightens up, walks close to the cabin, and calls out:

"Hello, the house!" at the same time he looks to the priming of his gun, and then fixes his eye on the door as it slowly opens. He drops the breech hastily to the ground as the face of Carrie peers forth.

"Beg pardon, Carrie, my girl! Is it only you miss? Beg pardon—but we are lookin' for a gentleman—a young gentleman, John Logan."

The man is terribly embarrassed as the girl looks him straight in the face, and his companion falls back into the woods until almost hidden from view.

"Well, and why do you come here, skulking like Indians?"

The man falls back; but recovering, he says, over his shoulder, as he turns to go:

"Yes, skulking around your cabin, like that other Injun, John Logan!"

The man jerks the coon-skin cap up on his left ear as he says this, and, tossing his head, steps back into the thick woods and is gone.

Later in the evening, John Logan, gun in hand, passes slowly and dreamily down the trail, close to old Forty-nine's cabin. Stumps and Carrie are at play in the wood close at hand, and come forth at a bound.

"Booh!" cries Carrie, darting around from behind a tree. "Booh! Mr. John Logan," continues the girl, and then with her two dimpled brown hands she throws back the glorious storm of black abundant hair, that all the time tumbles about her beautiful face.

"Why, Carrie, is that you? and Stumps, too? I am glad to see you. I—I was feeling awful lonesome."

"Been down to Squire Fields' again, haven't you?"

The girl has reached one hand out against a tree, and half leaning on it swings her right foot to and fro. John Logan starts just a little, looks at her, sighs, sets the breech of his gun on the ground, and as his eyes turn to hers, she sees he is very sad.

"Yes, Carrie, I—I am lonesome at my cabin since—since mother died. All the time, Carrie, I see her as I saw her that night, when I got home, sitting there on the porch, looking straight out at the gate, waiting for me, her hand on the dog's head, as if to hold him."

As he says this, poor little Stumps stands up close against a tree, draws his head down, and pulls up his shoulders.

"Yes, her long bony fingers resting on his head, holding him—and the faithful dog never moving for fear he would disturb her—for she was dead."

"Oh, Mr. John Logan, don't tell me about it—don't!" and the girl's apron is again raised to her face as she shudders.

"Poor old woman with the holler eyes," says Stumps to himself, in a tone that is scarcely audible.

"But there, never mind." The strong, handsome fellow brushes a tear aside, and taking up his gun again, tries to be cheerful, and shake off the care that encompasses him.

"And you got lonesome, and went down to see Sylvia Fields, didn't you?"

Again the girl's foot swings, and she looks askance from under her dark, heavy hair, at John Logan.

"Carrie, listen to me. Ever since I can remember, my mother waited and watched for my coming at my cabin door. But now, only think how lonely it is to live there. I can't go away. I have no fortune, no friends, no people. What would people say to me and of me out in the great world? Well, I went to Squire Fields, and I had a long talk with Sylvia."

The girl starts, and almost chokes.

"Been to see Sylvia Fields!" and with her booted foot she kicks the bark of a tree with all her might. "Had a long talk with her!" Then she whirls around, plunges her hand in her pocket, and swings her dress and says, as she pouts out her mouth,

"Oh, I feel just awful!"

John Logan approaches her.

"Why, Carrie, what's the matter?"

Carrie still swings herself, and turns her back to the man as she says, half savagely,

"I don't know what's the matter, and I don't care what's the matter; but I feel just awful, I do! I feel just like the dickens!"

"But, Carrie, you ought to be very, very happy, with all this beautiful scenery, and the sweet air in your hair and on your rosy face. And then what a lady you have grown to be! Now don't look cross at me like that! You ought to be as happy as a bird."

"But I ain't happy; I ain't happy a bit, I ain't!" Then, after a pause she continues:

"I don't like that Gar Dosson. He was here looking for you."

"Here? Looking for me?"

"Yes, and he called old Forty-nine Old Blossom-nose. I just hate him."

"Oh, well, Carrie, you know Forty-nine does drink dreadfully, and you know he has got a dreadful red face."

"Mr. John Logan," cries Carrie, hotly, "Forty-nine don't drink dreadfully. He don't drink dreadfully at all. He does take something for his ager, but he don't drink."

"Well, his face is dreadful red, anyway," answers John Logan.

Carrie, swinging her foot and thoughtfully looking up at the trees, says, after a pause:

"Do the trees drink? Do the trees and the bushes drink, John Logan? Their faces get awfully red in the fall, too."

"Carrie, you are cross to-day."

Carrie, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her dress as if she would shake it off her, snaps: "I ain't cross."

"Yes, you are," and the tawny man comes up to her and speaks in a kindly tone: "But come. Many a pleasant walk we have had in these woods together, and many a pleasant time we will have together still."

"We won't!"

"Ah, but we will! Come, you must not be so cross!"

The girl leans her forehead against the tree on her lifted arm, and swings her other foot. She looks down at the rounded ankle, and says, almost savagely, to herself; "She's got bigger feet than I have. She's got nearly twice as big feet, she has."

John Logan looks at the girl with a profound tenderness, as she stands there, pouting and swinging her foot. He attempts to approach her, but she still holds her brow bowed to the tree upon her arm, and seems not to see him. He shoulders his gun and walks past her, and says, kindly,

"Good-bye, Carrie."

But the girl's eyes are following him, although she would not be willing to admit it, even to herself. As he is about to disappear, she thrusts her hand madly through her hair, and pulls it down all in a heap. Still looking at him under her brows, still swinging her foot wildly, she says:

"Do you think red hair is so awful ugly?"

And what a wondrous glory of hair it was! It was so intensely black; and then it had that singular fringe of fire, or touch of Titian color, which seen in the sunset made it almost red.

The man stops, turns, comes back a step or two, as she continues:

"I do—I do! Oh, I wish to Moses I had tow hair, I do, like Sylvia Fields."

The man is standing close beside her now. He is looking down into her face and she feels his presence. The foot does not swing so violently now, and the girl has cautiously, and, as she believes, unseen, lifted the edge of her tattered sleeve to her eyes. "Why Carrie, your hair is not red." And he speaks very tenderly. "Carrie, you are going to be beautiful. You are beautiful now. You are very beautiful!"

Carrie is not so angry now. The foot stops altogether, and she lifts her face and says:

"No I ain't—I ain't beautiful! Don't you try to humbug me. I am ugly, and I know it! For, last winter, when I went down to the grocery to fetch Forty-nine—he'd gone down there to get medicine for his ager, Mr. John Logan—I heard a man say, 'She is ugly as a mud fence.' Oh, I went for him! I made the fur fly! But that didn't make me pretty. I was ugly all the same. No, I'm not pretty—I'm ugly, and I know it!"

"Oh, no, you're not. You are beautiful, and getting lovelier every day." Carrie softens and approaches him.

"Am I, John Logan? And you really don't think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world?"

"Do I really not think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world? Why, Carrie?"

Carrie, starting back, looks in his face and says, bitterly: "You do. You do think red hair is the ugliest thing in all this born world, and I just dare you to deny it. Sylvia Fields—she's got white hair, she has, and you like white hair, you do. I despise her; I despise her so much that I almost choke."

"Why, now, Carrie, what makes you despise Sylvia Fields?"

"I don't know; I don't know why I despise her, but I do. I despise her with all my might and soul and body. And I tell you, Mr. John Logan, that"—here the lips begin to quiver, and she is about to burst into tears—"I tell you, Mr. John Logan, that I do hope she likes ripe bananas; and I do hope that if she does like ripe bananas, that when bananas come to camp this fall, that she will take a ripe banana and try for to suck it; and I do hope she will suck a ripe banana down her throat, and get choked to death on it, I do."

"Oh, Carrie, this is very wicked!" cries John Logan, reproachfully, "and I must leave you if you talk that way. Good-bye," and the man shoulders his gun and again turns away.

"Well, do you think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world? Do you? Do you now?"

"Carrie, don't you know I love the beautiful, red woods of autumn?"

It is the May-day of the maiden's life; the May shower is over again, and the girl lifts her beautiful face, and says lightly, almost laughing through her tears,

"And, oh, you did like the red bush, didn't you, Mr. John Logan? And, oh, you did say that Moses saw the face of God in the burning bush, didn't you, Mr. John Logan?"

"I want you to tell me a story, I do," interposes Stumps. The boy had stood there a long time, first on one foot, then on the other, swinging his squirrel, pouting out his mouth, and waiting.

"Yes, tell us a story," urges Carrie.

"Oh, yes, tell us a story about a coon—no, about a panther—no, a bear. Oh, yes, about a bear! about a bear!" cries the boy, "about a bear!"

"Poor, half-wild children!" sighs John Logan. "Nothing to divert them, their little minds go out, curiously seeking something new and strange, just, I fancy as older and abler people's do in larger ways. Yes, I will tell you a story about a bear. And let us sit down; my long walk has tired my legs;" and he looks about for a resting place.

"Oh, here, this mossy log!" cries Stumps; "it's as soft as silk. You will sit there, and I here, and sister there."

John Logan leans his gun against a tree, hanging his pouch on the gun.

"Yes, I will sit here—and you, Carrie?"

"Here. Oh, John Logan, I just fit in."

One of Logan's arms falls loosely around Carrie, the other more loosely around Stumps.

"Yes, it's a nice fit, Carrie—couldn't be better if cut out by a tailor."

Carrie, swinging her feet, and looking in his face, very happy, exclaims:

"Oh, John Logan! Don't hold me too tight—you might hurt me!"

Stumps laughs. "He don't hold me tight enough to hurt me a bit." Then looking up in his face, says, "I want a bear story, I do."

"Well, I will tell you a story out of the Bible. Once upon a time there was a great, good man—a very good and a very earnest man. Well, this very good old man, who was very bald headed, took a walk one evening; and the very good old man passed by a lot of very bad boys. And these very bad boys saw the very bald head of the very good man and they said, 'Go up, old bald head! Go up, old bald head!' And it made this good man very mad; and he turned, and he called a she-bear out of the woods, and she ate up about forty."

"Oh!" cries Stumps, aghast.

"Oh!" adds Carrie. "And he wasn't a very good man. He might have been a very bald-headed man, but he wasn't a very good man to have her eat all the children, Mr. John Logan."

Stumps, nursing his squirrel, with his head on one side, says:

"Well, I don't believe it, no how—I don't! What was his name—the old, bald-head?"

"His name was Elijah, sir."

"Elijah! The bald-headed Elijah! Oh, I do believe it, then; for I know when Forty-nine and the curly-headed grocery-keeper were playing poker, at ten cents ante and pass the buck—when Forty-nine went down to get his ager medicine, sister—Forty-nine, he went a blind; and the curly-headed grocery-keeper he straddled it, and then Forty-nine seed him, he did. And so help me! he raked in the pot on a Jack full. And then the curly-headed grocery-keeper jumped up, and struck his fist on the table, and he said, 'By the bald-headed Elijah!'"

Carrie nestles closer, and in a half whisper, mutters,

"I believe I'm getting a little chilly."

Stumps hears this, and says,

"Why, Carrie, I'm just a sweatin', and—"

"Shoo! What noise was that? There is some one stealing through the bush!"

John Logan, as he spoke, rose up softly and cautiously, and half bent forward as he put the two children aside and reached his gun. He looked at the cap, ran an eye along the barrel, and then twisted his belt about so that a pistol was just visible beneath his coat. The man had had an intimation of trouble. Indeed, his gun had been at hand all this time, but he did not care to frighten the two happy waifs of the woods with any thought of what might happen to him, and even to them.

These children had but one thing to dread. There was but one terrible word to them in the language. It was not hunger, not starvation,—no, not even death. It was the Reservation! That one word meant to them, as it means to all who are liable to be carried there, captivity, slavery, degradation, and finally death, in its most dreadful form.

And why should it be so dreaded? Make the case your own, if you are a lover of liberty, and you can understand.

Statistics show that more than three-fourths of all Indians removed to Reservations of late years, die before becoming accustomed to the new order of things.

Yet Indians do not really fear death. But they do dread captivity. They are so fond of their roving life, their vast liberty—room! An Indian is too brave to commit suicide, save in the most rare and desperate cases. But his heart breaks from home-sickness, and he dies there in despair. And then to see his helpless little children die, one by one, with the burning fever, which always overtakes the poor captives!

"How many of us died? I do not know. We counted them at first. But when there were dead women and children in every house and not men enough to bury them, I did not count any more," said one of the survivors when questioned.

In earlier times, some of these Reservations were well chosen—the one on the Ummatilla, Oregon, for example. But of late years it would seem as if the most deadly locations had been selected. Perhaps this is thought best by those in authority, as the land is soon wanted by the whites if it is at all fit for their use. And the Indians in such cases are sooner or later made to move on.

This particular Reservation in California, however, never has been and never will be required or used by any man, except for a grave.

Why, in the name of humanity, such things are left to the choice and discretion of strangers, new men, men who know nothing about Indians and care nothing for them, except so far as they can coin their blood, is incomprehensible. It is a crime. Way out yonder, in the heart of a burning plain, by the side of an alkali lake that fairly reeked with malaria, where even reptiles died, where wild fowl never were found; a place that even beasts knew better than to frequent, without wood or water, save stunted sage and juniper and slimy alkali, in the very valley of death—this Reservation had been established.

"Ah, just the place. A place where we can use our cavalry when they attempt to escape," said the young sprig of an officer, when some men with a spark of humanity dared to protest.

And that was the reason for removing it so far from the sweet, pure air and water of the Sierras, and setting these poor captives down in the valley of death.

When they try to escape! Did it never occur to the United States to make a Reservation pleasant and healthy enough for an Indian to be content in? My word for it, if you will give him a place fit to live in, he will be willing to make his home there.

I know nothing in history so dark and dreadful as the story of the Indians in this dreaded and deadly Reservation of the valley. The Indians surrendered on condition that they should be taken to good homes and taught the ways of the white man. Once in the white man's power, the chains began to tighten, tighten at every step. Once there, they were divided into lots, families torn apart, and put to work under guard; men stood over them with loaded muskets. The land was full of malaria. These men of the mountains began to sicken, to die; to die by degrees,—to die, as the hot weather came on, by hundreds. At last a few of the strongest, the few still able to stand, broke away and found their way back to the mountains. They were like living skeletons, skin and bone only, hollow-eyed and horrible to look upon. Toward the last, these poor Indians had crawled on their hands and knees to get back. They were followed by the soldiers, and taken wherever they could be found; taken back to certain death. One, a young man, still possessed of a little strength, fought with sticks and stones with all his might as he lay in the trail where he had fallen in his flight. He lifted his two bony hands between the foe and his dying old father. The two were taken and chained together. That night the young man with an old pair of scissors, which he had borrowed on pretense of wanting to trim his hair, killed the old man by pushing one of the points into his heart. You could see by the marks of blood on the young man's hand next morning, that he had felt more than once to see if the old man was quite dead. Then he drove the point of the scissors in his own heart, and crawled upon the old man's body, embraced it and died there. And yet all this had been done so quietly that the two guards who marched back and forth only a few feet distant, did not know till next morning that anything of the kind had been. Sometimes these wretches would beg, and even steal, on their way back from the dreadful Reservation. They were frightful, terrible, at such times. They sometimes stood far off outside the gate, and begged with outstretched hands. Their appearances were so against them, hungry, dying; and then this traditional hatred of four hundred years.

But this is too much digression. John Logan knew all the wrongs of his people only too well. He sympathized with them. And this meant his own ruin. A few Indians had made their way back of late, and John Logan had harbored them while the authorities were in pursuit. This was enough. An order had been sent to bring in John Logan.

He knew of this, and that was why he now stood all alert and on fire, as these two men came stealing through the bush and straight for him. Should he fire? To shoot, to shoot at, to even point a gun at a white man, is death to the Indian. A slave of the South had been ten-fold more safe in striking his master in the old days of slavery, than is an Indian on the border in defending his person against a white man.

The two children, like frightened pheasants, when the old one gives signs of danger, darted down behind him, quick as thought, still as death. Their desperate and destitute existence in that savage land had made them savages in their cunning and caution. They said no word, made no sign. Their eyes were fixed on his every step and motion. He signaled them back. They darted like squirrels behind trees, and up and on through the thicket, toward the steep and inaccessible bluffs above. The two men saw the retreating children. They wanted Carrie. They darted forward; one of them jerked out and held up a paper in the face of John Logan.

"We want you at the Reservation. Come!"

Phin Emens stood full before Logan. He shook the paper in his face. The man did not move. Carrie was fast climbing up the mountain. She was about to escape. Gar Dosson was furious. He attempted to pass, to climb the mountain, and to get at the girl. Still Logan kept himself between as he slowly retreated.

"Stand aside, and let me get that girl. I must take her, too!" shouted Dosson. Still Logan kept the man back. And now the children had escaped. Wild with rage, Dosson caught Logan by the shoulder and shouted, "Come!" With a blow that might have felled an ox, the Indian brought the man to the ground. Then, grasping his rifle in his right hand, he darted through the thicket after the retreating children, up the mountain, while Phin Emens stooped over his fallen friend.