"Indian enough," Bella fumed. "And nobody knows anything about his father. We're respectable people and don't want a man with no name hanging round. I've no doubt he was born in a lodge or under a pine tree. What right's that kind of man to come ogling after a decent white girl whose father and mother were married in the Presbyterian Church?" Susan did not take it so much to heart. What was the good when Lucy obviously didn't care? As for Zavier, she felt sorry for him, for those keen observing faculties of hers had told her that the voyageur's raillery hid a real feeling. Poor Zavier was in love. Susan was pensive in the contemplation of his hopeless passion. He was to leave the train near South Pass and go back into the mountains, and there, alone, camp on the streams that drained the Powder River country. In all probability he would never see one of them again. His trapping did not take him West to the great deserts, and he hated the civilization where man became a luxurious animal of many needs. Like the buffalo and the red man he was restricted to the wild lands that sloped away on either side of the continent's mighty spine. His case was sad, and Susan held forth on the subject to Lucy, whom she thought callous and unkind. "It's terrible to think you'll never see him again," she said, looking for signs of compassion. "Don't you feel sorry?" Lucy looked down. She had been complaining to her friend of Zavier's follies of devotion. "There are lots of other men in the world," she said indifferently. Susan fired up. If not yet the authorized owner of a man, she felt her responsibilities as a coming proprietor. The woman's passion for interference in matters of sentiment was developing in her. "Lucy, you're the most hard-hearted girl! Poor Zavier, who's going off into the mountains and may be killed by the Indians. Don't you feel any pity for him? And he's in love with you--truly in love. I've watched him and I know." She could not refrain from letting a hint of superior wisdom, of an advantage over the unengaged Lucy, give solemnity to her tone. Lucy's face flushed. "He's half an Indian," she said with an edge on her voice. "Doesn't everyone in the train keep saying that every ten minutes? Do you want me to fall in love with a man like that?" "Why no, of course not. You couldn't. That's the sad part of it. He seems as much like other men as those trappers in the fort who were all white. Just because he had a Crow mother it seems unjust that he should be so sort of on the outside of everything. But of course you couldn't marry him. Nobody ever heard of a girl marrying a half-breed."