"Great Caesar! is one of that sort not enough? I'll never feel that my hand is clean again until I can give it a bath with some sort of disinfectant stuff. Now there's another one to greet! I'll not be able to eat fish again for a year. Why didn't luck send the old vagabond hunting with the rest? I can endure the women, for they don't sprawl around you and shake hands with you. Just tell me what I'm to donate for being allowed to bask in the light of Akkomi's countenance? Haven't a thing over here but some cigars." Overton only laughed silently, and gave more attention to the lodge of Akkomi than to his companion's disgust. When Black Bow emerged from the tent, he watched him sharply as he approached, to learn from the Indian's countenance, if possible, the result of the message. "If he sends a royal request that we partake of supper, I warn you, I shall be violently and immediately taken ill--too ill to eat," whispered Lyster, meaningly. Black Bow seated himself, filled his pipe, handed it to a squaw to light, and then sent several puffs of smoke skyward, ere he said: "Akkomi is old, and the time for his rest has come. He says the door of his lodge is open--that Dan may go within and speak what there is to say. But the stranger--he must wait till the day comes again." "Snubbed me, by George!" laughed Lyster. "Well, am I then to wait outside the portals, and be content with the crumbs you choose to carry out to me?" "Oh, amuse yourself," returned Overton, carelessly, and was on his feet at once. "I leave you to the enjoyment of Black Bow." A moment later he reached the lodge of the old chief and, without ceremony, walked in to the center of it. A slight fire was there,--just enough to kill the dampness of the river's edge, and over it the old squaw of Akkomi bent, raking the dry sticks, until the flames fluttered upward and outlined the form of the chief, coiled on a pile of skins and blankets against the wall. He nodded a welcome, said "Klehowyeh," and motioned with his pipe that his visitor should be seated on another pile of clothing and bedding, near his own person. Then it was that Overton discovered a fourth person in the shadows opposite him--the white woman he had been curious about. And it was not a woman at all,--only a girl of perhaps sixteen years instead--who shrank back into the gloom, and frowned on him with great, dark, unchildlike eyes, and from under brows wide and straight as those of a sculptor's model for a young Greek god; for, if any beauty of feature was hers, it was boyish in its character. As for beauty of expression, she assuredly did not cultivate that. The curved red mouth was sullen and the eyes antagonistic. One sharp glance showed Overton all this, and also that there was no Indian blood back of the rather pale cheek. "So you got out of the water alive, did you?" he asked, in a matter of fact way, as though the dip in the river was a usual thing to see.