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“Mitiahwe, heart’s blood of mine,” she said, “the birds go south, but they return. What matter if they go so soon, if they return soon. If the Sun wills that the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close the rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow and the gun, yet he may be sorry, and send a second summer–has it not been so, and the Coldmaker has hurried away–away! The birds go south, but they will return, Mitiahwe.”

“I heard a cry in the night while my man slept,” Mitiahwe answered, looking straight before her, “and it was like the cry of a bird–calling, calling, calling.”

“But he did not hear–he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not wake, surely it was good-luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him sleeping. Surely it was good-luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear.”

She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which would, perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but the time to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see.

Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her eyes. “Hai-yai!” she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the lodge, and from a leather bag drew forth a horseshoe and looked at it, murmuring to herself.

The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. “What is it, Mitiahwe?” she asked.

“It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from all the world, then it brings good-luck. Hai-yai! I will put it over the door, and then–” All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she rocked her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But presently she got to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin.

“O great Sun,” she prayed, “have pity on me and save me. I cannot live alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O great One, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that he will say, ‘This is mine, body of my body,’ and he will hear the cry and will stay. O great Sun, pity me!”

The old woman’s heart beat faster as she listened. The same thought was in the mind of both. If there were but a child, bone of his bone, then perhaps he would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return when he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in the wilderness.

As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift Wing said: “It is good. The white man’s Medicine for a white man’s wife. But if there were the red man’s Medicine too–“

“What is the red man’s Medicine?” asked the young wife, as she smoothed her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red sash round her waist.

The old woman shook her head, a curious, half-mystic light in her eyes, her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something. “It is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the head. I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there were no white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman’s breast there hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red men were like leaves in the forest–but it was a winter of winters ago, and the Medicine Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child! When Long Hand comes, what will Mitiahwe say to him?”