"Her father simply follows behind her and adores, as do all things that
come near her, down, or up, perhaps, to her two dogs--Wolf and Loo--for
either of which she would readily die if need be. Still," he added,
after a pause, "it IS a shame, as you say. She ought to know something
of the refinements of civilization, to which, after all, she belongs,
and from which none of us can hope to escape." The Duke was silent for
a few moments, and then added, with some hesitation: "Then, too, she is
quite a pagan; never saw a prayer-book, you know."

And so it came about, chiefly through The Duke's influence, I imagine,
that I was engaged by the Old Timer to go up to his ranch every week and
teach his daughter something of the elementaries of a lady's education.

My introduction was ominous of the many things I was to suffer of that
same young maiden before I had finished my course with her. The Old
Timer had given careful directions as to the trail that would lead me to
the canyon where he was to meet me. Up the Swan went the trail, winding
ever downward into deeper and narrower coulees and up to higher open
sunlit slopes, till suddenly it settled into a valley which began with
great width and narrowed to a canyon whose rocky sides were dressed out
with shrubs and trailing vines and wet with trickling rivulets from the
numerous springs that oozed and gushed from the black, glistening rocks.
This canyon was an eerie place of which ghostly tales were told from
the old Blackfeet times. And to this day no Blackfoot will dare to pass
through this black-walled, oozy, glistening canyon after the moon has
passed the western lip. But in the warm light of broad day the canyon
was a good enough place; cool and sweet, and I lingered through, waiting
for the Old Timer, who failed to appear till the shadows began to darken
its western black sides.