presently going to throw the lasso of his affection, and take her home
with him, yielding and glad, a white man, and his half-breed girl--but
such a half-breed!

"I seen enough of the way some of them women treated you," he continued,
"and I sez to myself, Her turn next. There's a way out, I sez, and John
Alloway pays his debts. When the anniversary comes round I'll put things
right, I sez to myself. She saved my life, and she shall have the rest
of it, if she'll take it, and will give a receipt in full, and open a new
account in the name of John and Pauline Alloway. Catch it? See--
Pauline?"

Slowly she got to her feet. There was a look in her eyes such as had
been in her mother's a little while before, but a hundred times
intensified: a look that belonged to the flood and flow of generations of
Indian life, yet controlled in her by the order and understanding of
centuries of white men's lives, the pervasive, dominating power of race.

For an instant she kept her eyes towards the window. The storm had
suddenly ceased, and a glimmer of sunset light was breaking over the
distant wastes of snow.

"You want to pay a debt you think you owe," she said, in a strange,
lustreless voice, turning to him at last. "Well, you have paid it. You
have given me a book to read which I will keep always. And I give you a
receipt in full for your debt."

"I don't know about any book," he answered dazedly. "I want to marry you
right away."