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The puffy, broad face of the great chief, the fierce, aquiline features of the stripling who was sitting beside him, and who was Big Wolf's fifteen-year-old son, and the dusky, delicate, high-caste features of the old man's lovely daughter, Wanaha. He saw all these and entered in silence, leaving his well-trained horse to its own devices outside.

The attempt to kidnap the white girl she put down to the enterprise of her brother's fierce, lawless nature, and as having nothing whatever to do with her husband. In fact she still believed it was of that very danger which Nevil had wanted to warn Rosebud. Now, when the girl suddenly burst in upon her, Wanaha was overjoyed, for she thought she had surely left the prairie world forever.

He entered the hut without notice or greeting for Wanaha, who, in true Indian fashion, waited by the cook-stove for her lord to speak first. He passed over to the bedstead which occupied the far end of the room, and sat himself down to a perusal of his papers. He was undoubtedly preoccupied and not intentionally unkind to the woman. Wanaha went steadily on with her work.

The girl's heart bounded, for she saw that her task was to be an easy one. "Yes, so it is. I have thought much about this thing. I should never have come back to the farm. It was bad." Again Wanaha nodded. "And that is why I come to you. I love my friends. There is some one I love, like you love your Nevil, and I want to save him.

The ensuing scene was one of ferocious rage on the part of the headstrong man, and fear, hidden under an exterior of calm debate, on the part of Wanaha. She knew her brother, and in her mind tried to account for her husband's absence. After the warriors had departed she passed a night of gloomy foreboding. All unconscious of her narrow escape, Rosebud headed away to the northeast.

"And so you have come back to us again," he said, after greeting the girl, while Wanaha smiled with her deep black eyes upon them from the table beyond the stove. "Couldn't stay away," the girl responded lightly. "The prairie's in my bones." Rosebud had never liked Nevil.

The reason of Nevil Steyne's toleration by the White River Farm people was curious. It was for Rosebud's sake; Rosebud and Wanaha, the wife of the renegade wood-cutter. The latter was different from the rest of her race. She was almost civilized, a woman of strong, honest character in spite of her upbringing. And between Rosebud and this squaw a strong friendship had sprung up.

He was thinking of that love which Wanaha had assured him Seth entertained for Rosebud, and he was glad. So glad that he forgot many things that he ought to have remembered. One amongst them was the fact that, whatever he might be, Wanaha was a good woman. And honesty never yet blended satisfactorily with rascality.

Now, as she stood smiling up into the dark face above her, she looked what she was; a girl in the flush of early womanhood, a prairie girl, wild as the flowers which grow hidden in the lank grass of the plains, as wayward as the breezes which sweep them from every point of the compass. "Mayn't I come in?" asked Rosebud, as the woman made no move to let her pass. Wanaha turned with some haste.

Steyne put on his greasy slouch hat and swung out of the house. Wanaha knew that what she had said was right, Nevil Steyne encouraged Little Black Fox. She wondered, and was apprehensive. Nevertheless, she went on with her work. The royal blood of her race was strong in her. She had much of the stoicism which is, perhaps, the most pronounced feature of her people.