The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1911-03-29

could affirm the rights Of daughter
the West; and her pride in him had
given a glow to her cheek and 4
spring to her step which made people
/ always look at her, no matter how
many others might be present. In
the chief street of Portage la Drome
men would stop their traffickins
and women nudge each other when
she passed, and wherever she went
she stirred interest, excited admira-
tion. or aroused prejudice-the pref
udice did not matter so long as her
father, Joel Renton, lived Whatever
his faults, and they were many
sometimes he drank too much, and
swore a great deal, and bullied and
ne was of the conquering race, IL
white man who had slept in white
sheets and eaten off white table
cloths, and used a knife and fork
since he was born; and the women
of his people had had soft petticoats
and fine stockings and white clothes
for their beds, and silk gowns for
| festal days, and feathered hats of
velvet, and shoes of polished leather,
always and always, back through
many generations. Indeed, yes, she
had held her head high, for she was
Of his women, of the women of his
people, with all their rights and all
their claims. She had held it high
till that stormy day-just such a day
as this, with the surf of snow break
ing against the house-when they
carried him in out of the wild tur-
moil of wind and snow, laying him
on the couch where she now sat,
and her head fell on his lfeless
breast, and she cried out to him to
come back to her
Before the world her head was
still held high, but in the attic-room,
and out on the prairies far away,
where only the coyote or the prairie
hen saw, her head dropped, and her
eyes grew heavy with pain and SOM
Der protest. Once in an agony of
loneliness, and cruelty hurt by
conspicuous slight put upon her at
the Portage, by the wife of the Reeve
of the town, who had daughters
twain of pure white blood got from
behind the bar of saloon at Winni-
peg, she had thrown open her win
dow at night with the frost below
zero, and stood in her thin night
dress, craving the death which she
hoped the cold would give her soon,
1t had not availed, however, and
once again she had ridden out in a
blizzard to die, but had come upon
man lost in the snow, and her
own misery had passed from her,
and her heart, full of the blood of
plainsmen, had done for another
what it would not do for itself. The
Indian in her had, with strange,
sure, instinct, found it's way to Port
age la Drome, the man, with both
hands and one foot frozen, on her
pony, she walking at his side, only
conscious that she had saved one.
not two lives that day.
Here was another such day, here
again was the storm in her heart
which had driven her into the plains
that other time, and here again was
that tempest of white death outside.
You have no sense. You are not
white. They will not have you. Sit
down" The words had fallen on
her ears with cold, deadly smoth-
er There came chill upon her
which stilled the wild pulses in her,
which suddenly robbed the eyes az
their brightness, and gave fixed
drawn look to the face.
You are not white. They will not
have you, Pauline" The Indian
mother repeated the words after a
moment, her eyes grown still more
gloomy; for in her, too, there was
dark tide of passion moving. In all
the years that had gone, this girl
had always turned to the white
father rather than to her, and she
had been left more and more alone.
Her man had been kind to her, and
she had been a faithful wife, but
she had resented the natural instinct
of her half-breed child, almost white
herself, and with the feelings and
ways Of the whites, to turn always to
her father, as if to superior guide,
to higher influence and authority
Was not she the descendant of
Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through
generations of rulers and warriors?
Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot