Siena met Baroma’s gaze, but spoke no word. His gift spoke for him. The hated slave had dared to ask in marriage the hand of the proud Baroma’s daughter. Siena towered in the firelight with something in his presence that for a moment awed beholders. Then the passionate and untried braves broke the silence with a clamor of the wolf pack. Tillimanqua, wild son of Baroma, strung an arrow to his bow and shot it into Siena’s hip, where it stuck, with feathered shaft quivering. The spring of the panther was not swifter than Siena; he tossed Tillimanqua into the air and, flinging him down, trod on his neck and wrenched the bow away. Siena pealed out the long-drawn war whoop of his tribe that had not been heard for a hundred years, and the terrible cry stiffened the Crees in their tracks. Then he plucked the arrow from his hip and, fitting it to the string, pointed the gory flint head at Tillimanqua’s eyes and began to bend the bow. He bent the tough wood till the ends almost met, a feat of exceeding great strength, and thus he stood with brawny arms knotted and stretched. A scream rent the suspense. Emihiyah fell upon her knees. “Spare Emihiyah’s brother!” Siena cast one glance at the kneeling maiden, then, twanging the bow string, he shot the arrow toward the sky. “Baroma’s slave is Siena,” he said, with scorn like the lash of a whip. “Let the Cree learn wisdom.” Then Siena strode away, with a stream of dark blood down his thigh, and went to his brush tepee, where he closed his wound. In the still watches of the night, when the stars blinked through the leaves and the dew fell, when Siena burned and throbbed in pain, a shadow passed between his weary eyes and the pale light. And a voice that was not one of the spirit voices on the wind called softly over him, “Siena! Emihiyah comes.” The maiden bound the hot thigh with a soothing balm and bathed his fevered brow. Then her hands found his in tender touch, her dark face bent low to his, her hair lay upon his cheek. “Emihiyah keeps the robe,” she said. “Siena loves Emihiyah,” he replied. “Emihiyah loves Siena,” she whispered. She kissed him and stole away. On the morrow Siena’s wound was as if it had never been; no eye saw his pain. Siena returned to his work and his trapping. The winter melted into spring, spring flowered into summer, summer withered into autumn. Once in the melancholy days Siena visited Baroma in his wigwam. “Baroma’s hunters are slow. Siena sees a famine in the land.” “Let Baroma’s slave keep his place among the squaws,” was the reply. That autumn the north wind came a moon before the Crees expected it; the reindeer took their annual march farther south; the moose herded warily in open groves; the whitefish did not run, and the seven-year pest depleted the rabbits. When the first snow fell Baroma called a council and then sent his hunting braves far and wide.