“I’ll let you have the money.  Spend what you need, but account for it to me afterward.”

Jessie felt the irregular beat of a hammer inside her bosom.  “What is it you think, Mr. Whaley?” she cried softly.

“I don’t know what I think.  Probably nothing to it.  But there’s a locket.  We know that.  With a picture that looks like you, Lemoine here thinks.  We’d better find out whose picture it is, hadn’t we?”

“Yes, but—­Do you mean that maybe it has something to do with me?  How can it?  The sister of Stokimatis was my mother.  Onistah is my cousin.  Ask Stokimatis.  She knows.  What could this woman of the picture be to me?”

Jessie could not understand the fluttering pulse in her throat.  She had not doubted that her mother was a Blackfoot.  All the romance of her clouded birth centered around the unknown father who had died when she was a baby.  Stokimatis had not been very clear about that.  She had never met the man, according to the story she had told Sleeping Dawn.  Neither she nor those of her tribal group knew anything of him.  Was there a mystery about his life?  In her childish dreams Jessie had woven one.  He was to her everything desirable, for he was the tie that bound her to all the higher standards of life she craved.

“I don’t know.  Likely it’s all a mare’s nest.  Find Stokimatis, Lemoine, and bring her back with you.  Well see what she can tell us.  And get the locket and the ring, with the story back of them.”

Again Lemoine referred to the cost.  He would have to take his dog-train to Whoop-Up, and from there out to the creek where Pierre Roubideaux was living.  Makoye-kin and his family might be wintering anywhere within a radius of a hundred miles.  Was there any use in going out on such a wild-hare chase?

Whaley thought there was and said so with finality.  He did not give his real reason, which was that he wanted to pay back to McRae and his daughter the debt he owed.  They had undoubtedly saved his life after he had treated her outrageously.  There was already one score to his credit, of course.  He had saved her from West.  But he felt the balance still tipped heavily against him.  And he was a man who paid his debts.

It was this factor of his make-up—­the obligation of old associations laid upon him—­that had taken him out to West with money, supplies, and a dog-train to help his escape.

Jessie went out to find her father.  Her eagerness to see him outflew her steps.  This was not a subject she could discuss with Matapi-Koma.  The Cree woman would not understand what a tremendous difference it made if she could prove her blood was wholly of the superior race.  Nor could Jessie with tact raise such a point.  It involved not only the standing of Matapi-Koma herself, but also of her sons.

The girl found McRae in the storeroom looking over a bundle of assorted pelts—­marten, fox, mink, and beaver.  The news tumbled from her lips in excited exclamations.