Two snows had passed and the birds, again returned from the warm-land filled the river pines with their old time melody; while the buttercups flowered in radiance. The wild rose peeped coquettishly from its bud, and the tender grass clothed plain and upland with shimmering green. The ermine cloak of winter, pursued by the melting breeze, retreated still farther into the higher altitudes of the majestic Rockies. Earth was taking on new life and the joy of living seemed with all⁠—save one whose heart was emptiness⁠—whose face was but a reflection of her former self.

Jim stood at the door of the bunkhouse and watched the familiar figure of Wanawish, ride over the ridge to her favorite haunt. He muttered an oath as the cause of the blighted life came into his mind. He glanced at the sun now past the meridian and going to the barn, threw the saddle on the Bay Devil. He had determined to go to the village for the week’s mail in the hope of hearing from his mother, whom he had not seen for three years.

The foreman did not loiter on the way. Reaching the little town, he went directly to the post office where he received a heavy ranch mail, but no missive from his mother. There was one however, addressed to Cogewea, from the Indian Agent of her old home in the Okanogan country. Some of the “boys” endeavored to prevail on Jim to engage in a game of pool, or try monte at the Kootenai camp; but to all entreaties he turned a deaf ear. He thought of the lonely, unhappy girl out on the solitary butte and the letter was an excuse for going to her. He had never intruded on her sorrow, as much as he loved her. Aside from a tribal custom, he had felt that her grief was sacred and that time was the only balm. But now! well, he would carry the letter to her and if opportunity afforded perhaps!⁠—

Cogewea lingered on Buffalo Butte, thinking of the days when all was happiness; of the many pleasant hours she had spent on this isolated height. At her feet lay the old grey buffalo skull and broken arrow point. The towering mountains greeted her vision, but not with the soul awakening emotions of the past. Life seemed to hold but little for her. Friends were not so familiar as of yore, and Jim held strangely aloof. Somehow she yearned for his old-time companionship. She realized now that it was something more than a “sister’s love” which she had borne for him. This new awakening was gnawing her very life away. He surely did not understand the true cause of her despondency. After the first pangs of humiliating disappointment, her only feelings for the false Shoyahpee, were of remorse and bitter regret that their paths had ever crossed. In her generous heart, she pitied Densmore’s weakness but detested his duplicity; and above all she devoutly thanked the Great Spirit for her timely deliverance.

She recalled Jim’s many considerate attentions, his unselfish protective care for her, his fearless interference in her behalf at the races, his graceful and manly acceptance of humiliating defeat at the social, the refusal of his hand on this same spot and the chivalry of his coming to her rescue among the cottonwoods, all came crowding in upon her memory. She could not help wishing that he would⁠—

The fall of an unshod hoof on the stony ground and the jingle of spurs broke upon Cogewea’s ears. She did not look up, but intuitively knew who the horseman was. Her eyes dropped to the old skull. She started visibly! Could she be deceived? A voice seemed to issue from its cavernous depths in the Indian tongue; a laudation of⁠—

“The Man! The Man! The Man!”

Then it was accusing; a plea of pity that such deep and honorable love should be requited with nothing more than insipid friendship.

The voice ceased as suddenly and as mysteriously as it came.54

Jim was at Cogewea’s side silently holding the outstretched letter. She missed the cheery old-time: “Hell‑o Sis!” With no word of greeting, she too the missive and broke the seal. Jim stood, arms folded and leaning against the rock, gazing at the splendid panorama of the Rockies. She read the letter and he heard her murmur:

“The lust of gold and the mockery of money! The toil amid glaciers and the ghastly snowfields of the North! the daddy we scarcely knew! The Shoyahpee barters his life! his very soul! for a heritage of death!”

Jim turned to see the old-time dream in the girl’s eyes, otherwise her face showed no emotion save that of the sorrow to which he had grown accustomed.

“What is it! Sis?” he asked kindly.

“Nothing!” was the reply, “except that I have escaped a lot of trouble.”

“Some settlement of reservation of ’lotment ’fairs?”

“Not exactly! You know that we had not heard from daddy for over fourteen years. He was in Alaska and we thought long ago that he was dead. This letter informs me that he only recently died, leaving money and mining property worth several millions of dollars.”

“But you don’t call that missin’ a lot of trouble do you?” asked Jim, his eyes showing slight astonishment.

“Daddy had remarried, made a will bequeathing his three daughters twenty dollars each, and the remainder of his fortune to his widow, a young white woman from New York!”

“Well! I bedam’! Your daddy, Sis! but a Shoyahpee to the last. My own father the same, only we don’t know where he is or what became of him. He left my Indian mother many years ago, coverin’ his tracks completely. Too bad that you and your sisters couldn’t a had some of that there dough.”

“It was all right!” Cogewea rejoined smiling, although her eyes were swimming in tears. “I don’t know that I care! The curse of the Shoyahpee seems to go with everything that he touches. We despised breeds are in a zone of our own and when we break from the corral erected about us we meet up with trouble. I only wish that the fence could not be scaled by the soulless creatures who have ever preyed upon us.”

“I wish I had a killed that there da⁠—”

“Don’t Jim! Do not refer to the past! It never was! It’s only an impossible fearfulness! a dreadful hallucination! a nightmare of lies! It is dead! buried and forgotten!”

Cogewea’s countenance had changed to something of her former self. Jim thought that she never had appeared quite so beautiful and captivating. For a time he was silent and then exclaimed earnestly:

“Sis! I always did love you some, and now I like you like hell! S’pose we remain together in that there corral you spoke of as bein’ built ’round us by the Shoyahpee? I ain’t never had no ropes on no gal but you.”

“Aw! Jim, quit yo’ kiddin’!” she answered, dropping into the easy vocabulary of the range. “I’ve tol’ yo’ that I would be yo’ sister; but if yo’ don’t behave I’ll quit likin’ yo’ as⁠—as a brother! Savey?”

There was a banter in her tone which Jim could not mistake.

“Yes! I think I savey all right!” and he slipped an arm about the yielding form. “By gollies! little squ⁠—Sis! Oh! hell! That there don’t sound right to me no more. I⁠—”

“Call me Cogewea! your own little Cogewea!” she exclaimed, nestling her head on his deep chest like a weary child.

For a long minute the transported Westerner held the girl closely and in silence. Then releasing her, he said simply:

“Guess we better be hittin’ the trail! It’s late and night’s goin’ be chilly for you without no shawl.”

“Do not hurry! See how magnificent those grand old mountains are in the moonlight. Isn’t this a splendid world?”

“Yes! it is jus’ ’bout right⁠—when not too cold nor too hot⁠—nor nothin’ wrong with the corral fencin’. But the best rider of the Flathead ain’t a worryin’ ’bout this durn’ old world no more! And I sure do b’lieve in them there hot rock signs of the sweat-house!”

“So do I!” laughed Cogewea, feeling the blood suffuse her cheeks. “But do let up on that ‘best rider’ stunt. Maybe you will not want to ride any more, only for fun. I forgot to tell you all that is in this letter. It transpired that owing to a technical flaw in daddy’s will, we girls come in for a share in some of his fortune, amounting to a quarter million dollars each. And say! Jim! Stemteemä will now let me have that brooch, I told you I would wear.”

“Well! I bedam’!” ejaculated Jim, as they turned to go.

Cogewea paused, gazing intensely at the grey skull⁠—listening! She heard the Voice as it comes only to the Indian:

“The Man! The Man! The Man!”

The moon, sailing over the embattled Rockies, appeared to smile down on the dusky lovers, despite the ugly Swa-lah-kin clinging to his face.

In a cheap boarding house in an eastern city a few weeks later, a young man with a selfish mouth, suddenly turned pale as he read in a western paper an account of the settling of the great McDonald mining estate in Alaska, and the marriage of his two half-blood daughters. One of them a graduate of Carlisle, to the “Best Rider of the Flathead,” also a half-blood. The younger daughter known as the “Shy girl,” had departed with her husband, Eugene LaFleur, a polished and wealthy Parisian scholar, on a honeymoon tour of Europe.

The trail’s a lane! the trail’s a lane!
Dead is the branding fire.
The Prairies wild are tame and mild,
All close-corraled with wire.

Badger Clark