the ground, he examined footsteps in the sand. Then he laid down his bow and game, and first looking upward, stood with his back against a tree.
"God of Justice!" exclaimed Gentle Dove, "nerve thy weak creature's arm!"
She placed her child upon the ground, chose from her quiver a well-sharpened arrow and fitted it to the string. Fixing her keen eye for the moment on the mark she aimed at, she drew the weapon to its flinty head and let it speed. The whizzing shaft just grazed the ear of the false savage, and quivered in the bark.
"Lost!" said Gentle Dove, but did not remove her gaze, and fitted another arrow to the string.
Que-la-wah leaped aloft and uttered a terrific yell, and leaving after him his bow and game, fled quickly to the thickest woods. Then Nito-me-ma inscribed a cross upon the tree in token of deliverance, and gathering at its foot the small wild flowers, she bore them home and wove a votive chaplet for her shrine.
The autumn passed away; the falling leaves and sombre skies announced that winter was at hand. Nito-me-ma laid up a great store of brushwood, and dry turf and pitchy bark, and prepared a wadded curtain for the opening in the hollow tree, and made thick brooms of twigs wherewith to sweep away the snows, and little lamps of clay to be used in the long winter evenings, and garments of the furs of rabbits, and a soft couch for her child from the down of the prairie-hen, and treasured up eggs in the waters taken from the salt spring. Thus having done all for safety which her knowledge prompted, she waited without apprehension for the cutting blasts and for thick-falling snows. Beautiful and like a conqueror came on October in the distant west, with gorgeous plumes and purple hues, like hectic flushes of the dying. A thin blue vapor floated over vale and mountain-top; the air was fragrant with the scent of strawberry-leaves, while the still genial sun encouraged vegetation and wooed the prairie-rose to bloom. The wild grapes hung in tempting clusters from the high trees of the forest, as if the produce of the elm and vine. Then often at the hour of sunset, when the birds hid their heads beneath their wings, and all the labors of the day were finished,
