In a very few days she had so ingratiated herself in the good opinion of the women of the village, that they really took a fancy to her. She willingly helped them in all the daily tasks heaped upon them by their hard masters. She learned readily how to tan the different furs which were brought into the place after a hunt, made moccasins, herded the ponies in her turn, and even became such an adept in cooking that she was soon permanently assigned as cook for the occupants of the tepee in which she was lodged. Then she was spared the dirtier and harder labor which fell to the lot of the Indian women, for she had been brought up by her excellent mother to perform all kinds of work in which a white woman is supposed to become proficient, and now it served her in a way that was never dreamed of. The Indians occasionally had flour, but knew of but one way to prepare it. They made a kind of gruel, by boiling, and adding a little salt. A most unpalatable dish! She made bread and biscuit, which she baked in the most primitive way, on a piece of thin iron before the coals of the camp-fire; but then the food was so different from that to which the savages had been accustomed, that no one was permitted to prepare the meals for the lodge where she made her abode, but the White Fawn, as they began to call her. Like Constantinople, every village is overrun with dogs, and they are the most vigilant guards that can be imagined. No one may hope to approach an Indian lodge, or a group of them, without being saluted by a chorus of the most unearthly barking and howling from the canine cataract that is sure to pour out the moment a strange footstep is heard. Kate, always a lover of pets, immediately began to cultivate the friendship of the dogs of the village. There was, however, something more in her method than mere natural affection for the brute creation; she had an object in view. She knew that when the time arrived for her to attempt to escape, the dogs must be thoroughly attached to her, so that they would regard any movement she might make without the slightest suspicion. This she soon effected, and in a short time every miserable cur in the village was her faithful ally.