"You will have to look out for Mary, too, Sarpy, as you have promised to do for Nikumi. I haven't any more money to leave with you at present, but I will send you some from England. I don't want her to grow up without any education at all, and have to slave and toil as squaws do generally, nor Nikumi either." "I'll see to them," said Sarpy, briefly, "there isn't much chance for education unless they keep up the post here and she be permitted to learn with the white children; for I don't suppose Nikumi will ever let her go away to school as Fontenelle sends his boys, but she shall have what education she can get and Nikumi shall not be obliged to go back to her tribe for support as long as I am here," and the smoke of the Frenchman's and Englishman's pipes ascended to ratify this compact. The next day at sunrise the boats dropped swiftly down the river. A figure at the stern of one of them watched until the last sign of the landing place faded in the early morning light. Dr. Gale had played a brief part in the settlement of a new country from which he now disappeared as if he had never been. In after years only the few who belonged to that early settlement remembered that Mary was his child, and told of it sometimes, when they recounted the adventurous life of those early days. A young man listened to these reminiscences from the lips of the strange, irascible, but warm hearted Frenchman, and treasured them in memory. Hence this true tale. Nikumi released from her reptile inhabited cave by the little red bird in the tree down the ravine, came back to her tipi. She had kept her child but she had lost her lover and her life. How should she take it up again? She had been always quiet and little given to the chatter and laughter of the young squaws; she was only a little more quiet now, and Mary's lot was decided; she would always be an Indian woman.