"It is not difficult to believe that, Mr. Chillis. There is heroic material in you, and, I fear, none in Mr. Rumway." She spoke naturally and cheerfully now, as if she had no sentiment too sacred to be revealed about the person in question. "But why was there no motive?" "Why? It was my fate; there was none--that's all. I had gone off to the mountains when a lad, an' couldn't git back--couldn't even git letters from home. The fur companies didn't allow o' correspondence--it made their men homesick. When I came to be a man, I did as the other men did, took an Indian wife, an' became the father o' half-breed children. I never expected to live any other way than jest as we lived then--roamin' about the mountains, exposed to dangers continually, an' reckless because it was no use to think. But, after I had been a savage for a dozen years--long enough to ruin any man--the fur companies began to break up. The beaver were all hunted out o' the mountains. The men were ashamed to go home--Indians as we all were--an' so drifted off down here, where it was possible to git somethin' to eat, an' where there was quite a settlement o' retired trappers, missionaries, deserted sailors, and such-like Whites." "You brought your families with you?" "Of course. We could not leave them in the mountains, with the children, to starve. Besides, we loved our children. They were not to blame for bein' half-Indian; an' we could not separate them from their mothers, ef we had a-wished. We did the only thing we could do, under the circumstances--married the mothers by White men's laws, to make the children legitimate. Even the heads of the Hudson's Bay Company were forced to comply with the sentiment of the White settlers; an' their descendants are among the first families of Oregon. But they had money an' position; the trappers had neither, though there were some splendid men among them--so our families were looked down upon. O, White Rose! didn't I use to have some bitter thoughts in those days? for my blood was high blood, in the State where I was raised." "I can imagine it, very easily," said Mrs. Smiley, softly. "But I never let on. I was wild and devil-may-care. To hide my mortification, I faced it out, as well as I could; but I wasn't made, in the beginnin', for that kind o' life, an' it took away my manhood. After the country began to settle up, an' families--real White families--began to move in, I used to be nearly crazy, sometimes. Many's the day that I've rode through the woods, or over the prairies, tryin' to git away from myself; but I never said a cross word to the squaw wife. Why should I?--it was not her fault. Sometimes she fretted at me (the Indian women are great scolds); but I did not answer her back. I displeased her with my vagabond ways, very likely--her White husband, to whom she looked for better things. I couldn't work; I didn't take no interest in work, like other men."