A feeling of utter loneliness came over Split's faithful ally. She saw the balance of power in the Madigan oligarchy rudely disturbed. She beheld, in a swift, dread vision, the undisputed supremacy of the party of Sissy. Dismay entered her soul and shook her body, for with the brunette of the twins emotion and action were synonymous. "Oh, don't go, Split!" she begged, squirming unhappily at her end of the plank. "Don't go!" High up in the air, Split smiled superbly. There was _noblesse oblige_ in that smile; also the strong teasing tincture which no Madigan could resist using, even upon her closest ally. "Oh, Split--o-o-oh, Split!" wailed Fom, forgetting in her wriggling misery how close she already was to the end of the plank. A crash and a bump and a squeal told it to her all at once. She had slid clear off, getting an instantaneous effect of her haughty sister unsupported at a dizzy eminence, before Split came bumping down to earth, the see-saw giving that regal head a parting, stunning tap as the long end finally settled down and the short one went up to stay. It was never in the ethics of Madigan warfare to explain the inexplicable. Florence was on her feet, flying as though for her very life, before Split, shaken down from her dreams, quite realized what had happened. And she was still sitting as she had fallen when Jim, the Indian, came for the sawbuck. Jim limped, his eyes were sore and watery, and it took him two weeks to conquer the Madigan woodpile, which any other Piute in town could have leveled in half the time. "Him fall, eh?" he asked, dismantling the see-saw with that careful leisureliness that accounted for the Chinaman Wong's contempt for Indians. "Not him; _her_, Jim." Split possessed a passion for imparting knowledge, of which she had little, and which was hard for her to attain. Jim grinned. "She no got little gal like you teach her Inglis," he said, gently apologetic. "Not she, Jim; _he_. How old is your little girl?" Split remembered that a genteel interest in the lower classes is becoming to the well-born. "He just big like you," Jim responded mournfully, drawing the back of his brown hand across his nose. "But he all gone." "Dead?" Split crossed her legs uneasily as she squatted, and lowered her voice reverently. "He no dead," Jim said, lifting the sawbuck and easing it on his shoulder. "One Washoe squaw steal him--little papoose, nice little papoose. Much white--like you, missy. So white, squaw say no sure Injun." "Jim!" "Take him down Tluckee valley. Take him 'way. Jim see squaw one day long time 'go--Washoe Lake--shoot ducks. Heap shoot squaw. He die, but he say white Faginia man got papoose." "Jim!" It was the faintest echo of the first terrified exclamation. "Come Faginia, look papoose. No find. Chop wood long time. Heap hogady--not much dinner. Nice papoose--white, like you."