saw clearly while she braved the extremity.  After a while her breast began to rise and fall with the exercise, her cheeks flushed, and I saw she had met the flood tide.  All this time the voice of the squaw grew steadily nearer.  I imagined her, as I had seen others before, kneeling on the bank, rocking herself, beating her breast.  Then it came over me that we were forced to hug the shore to avoid one of the reedy shallows that choked the estuary and must pass very close to her.  The next moment there was a lull, and the girl looked across her shoulder and called ‘Clahowya!’ At the same time she rested on her oars long enough to take off her hat and toss it with careless directness on my breathing hole.  The squaw’s answer came from above me, and she repeated and intoned the word so that it seemed part of her dirge.  ‘Clahowya!  Clahowya!  Clahowya!  Wake tenas papoose.  Halo!  Halo!’ The despair of it cut me worse than lashes.  Then I heard other voices; a dog barked, and I understood we were skirting the encampment.

“After that the noise grew fainter, and in a little while the girl uncovered my face.  The channel had widened; the tang of salt came on the wind; and when I ventured to raise my head a little, I saw the point at the mouth of the river looming purple-black.  Then, as we began to round it, we came suddenly on a canoe, drifting broadside, with a single salmon hunter crouching in it, ready with his spear.  It flashed over me that he was one of the two Indians who had tracked me to the Duckabush; the taller one who had tried to drink at the rill; then he made his throw and at the same instant the girl’s hat fell again on my face.  I heard her call her pleasant ‘Clahowya!’ and she added, rowing on evenly:  ’Hyas delate salmon.’  The next moment his answer rang astern:  ’Clahowya!  Clahowya!  Hyas delate salmon.’

“At last I felt the swell of the open, and she leaned to uncover my face once more.  ‘The steamer is in sight,’ she said, and I raised my head again and saw the boat, a small moving blot with a trailer of smoke, far up the sapphire sea.  Then I turned on my elbow and looked back.  The canoe and the encampment were hidden by the point; we were drifting off the wharf of the small town-site, almost abandoned, where the steamer made her stop.  There was nothing left to do but express my gratitude, which I did clumsily enough.

“‘You mustn’t make so much of it,’ she said; ’the first thing a reservation Indian is taught is to forget the old law, a life for a life.’

“‘I know that,’ I answered, ’still I couldn’t have faced the best white man that first hour, and off there in the mountains, away from reservation influences, my chances looked small.  I wish I could be as sure the men who were with me are safe.’

“She gave me a long, calculating look.  ‘They will be—­soon,’ she said.  ’My brother Robert should be on the steamer with the superintendent and reservation guard.’  And she dipped her oars again, pointing the boat a little more towards the landing, and watched the steamer while I sifted her meaning.