to be expected so soon, commanded Sally to go into the house and to "shut
up."

Then he faced Singing Stream and said to her in her own language: "You
must go away from here. The pale-faced woman is my wife by the white man’s
law—ring and Bible. No Indian marriage about this."

But the brown woman only pointed to Judith. She asked Rodney had she not
been a good squaw to him.

And Rodney, who at best was but a poltroon, could only repeat: "You got to
keep away from here. It’s the white man’s law—one squaw for one man."

From within came the sound of Sally’s lamentation as she called for her
father and brother to take her from the squaw and contamination. Warren
Rodney was a man of few words. It had become his unpleasant duty to act,
and to act quickly. He snatched Judith from her mother and took her into
the house, and he returned with his Winchester, which was not loaded, to
Singing Stream.

"You got to go," he said, and levelling the Winchester, he repeated the
command. Singing Stream looked at him with the dumb wonder of a forest
thing. "I was a good squaw to you," she said; and did not even curse him.
And turning, she ran towards the foot-hills, with all the length of purple
calico trailing.

Now Mrs. Rodney, _née_ Tumlin, was but human, and her cup of happiness as
the wife of a "squaw man" was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.
The expulsion of her predecessor, at such a time, to make room for her own
home-coming, was, it seemed, open to criticism. "The neighborhood"—it