ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER

"It's got to be settled to-night, Nance. This game is up here, up for
ever. The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they'll soon be
roostin' in this post; the Injuns are goin', the buffaloes are most gone,
and the fur trade's dead in these parts. D'ye see?"

The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her,
but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes and a face
somewhat set.

"You and your brother Bantry's got to go. This store ain't worth a cent
now. The Hudson's Bay Company'll come along with the redcoats, and
they'll set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they
call 'agricultural settlers.' There'll be a railway, and the Yankees'll
send up their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--"

"And the days of smuggling will be over," put in the girl in a low voice.
"No more bull-wackers and muleskinners 'whooping it up'; no more
Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting each
others' throats. A nice quiet time coming on the border, Abe, eh?"

The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not
been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life
as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to
it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of
the life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was
not in the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something