ness. All this I could bear, if she had good treatment after it. But then, when her drudgery is over, she must be beaten, or have a stick of wood thrown at her head. Yesterday my mother was beaten for not beating me hard enough, because I said I would die sooner than marry, and so I would!"
"The Indian's is a bad life," said the old man. "What you say is true. Indian women are slaves; and Indian old men are abandoned, as I am, to die."
"Father, you shall not die if I can help it. I will build your fire, peel bark to improve your shelter, and break holes in the ice to catch fish."
For a moment the old man's Indian apathy was melted, and a strange, unwonted feeling, which, a little more indulged, would have brought tears to his eyes, stole through his breast.
"We-no-na deserves a better husband than any Dahcotah would make," said the old man. "It is hard to speak against one's own nation; but what I have seen, I have seen. We-no-na does not desire to be a slave, and so she will go unwedded."
"Father, I would willingly toil like a slave, if there were loving words and looks to repay me; but the angry threat, the blow, the contempt of a man is more than I can submit to. I think the Great Spirit has made me different from other Dahcotah women."
Saying this, We-no-na seized the hatchet, and treading lightly and fleetly over the snow toward that grove of oak which you see in the direction of the north-west, cut a bundle of dry boughs, and brought them to the fire. The old man and maiden then partook of a frugal meal of dried venison; and when the night came on, one of them watched the fire while the other slept.
The next morning We-no-na crossed the lake on the ice to that bluff with the bowl-like hollow on its front, to reconnoitre. What was her joy on discovering traces of deer! She had brought the old man's bow and arrows with her, and she resolved to lie in wait for the game on which not only her own life, but another's, seemed now to depend. Her vigilance was soon repaid. A noble deer came bounding by toward an oak opening which lies just back of the bluff. With beating heart We-no-na fixed the arrow in the string, and without
