Now Mrs. Rodney, nee Tumlin, was but human, and her cup of happiness as the wife of a “squaw man” was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.  The expulsion of her predecessor, at such a time, to make room for her own home-coming, was, it seemed, open to criticism.  “The neighborhood”—­it included perhaps five families living in a radius of as many hundred miles—­felt that the Tumlins had established a bad precedent.  A “squaw man” driving out a brown wife to make room for a white is not a heroic figure.  It had been done before, but it would not hand down well in the traditions of the settling of this great country.  Trespass of law and order, with their swift, red-handed reckoning, were but moves of the great game of colonization.  But to shove out a brown woman for a white was a mean move.  Few stopped at the Rodneys’ ranch, though it marked the first break in the journey from town to the gold-mining country.  Rodney had fallen from his estate as a pioneer; his political opinions were unsought in the conclaves that sat and spat at the stove, when business brought them to the joint saloon and post-office.  The women dealt with the question more openly, scorning feminine subtlety at this pass as inadequate ammunition.  When they met Mrs. Rodney they pulled aside their skirts and glared.  This outrage against woman it was woman’s work to settle.

Mrs. Rodney, who had no more moral sense than a rabbit, felt that she was the victim of persecution.  She knew she was a good woman.  Hadn’t she a husband?  Had there ever been a word against her character?  What was the use of making all that fuss over a squaw?  It was not as if she was a white woman.  The injustice of it preyed on the former Miss Tumlin.  She took to the consolations of snuff-dipping and fell from her pink-and-white estate.

The Tumlin family did not remain long enough in the Black Hill country to witness Sally’s failure as the wife of a pioneer.  The restlessness of the “settler,” if the paradox be permissible, was in the marrow of their bones.  The makeshifts of the wagon, the adventures of the road, were the only home they craved.  The spring after Sally’s marriage they set forth for California, the year following for New Mexico, and still sighed for new worlds to visit.  They were happier now that Sally, the one element of discontent, had been removed from their perennial journeying by the merciful dispensation of marriage.  Old Tumlin, his wife, and the son gave themselves up more than ever to the day-dreams of the road, the freedom of the open country, and the spirit of adventure.

Rodney’s squaw wife was taken in by some neighbors, good folk who were conversant with all phases of the romance.  They stood by her in her hour of trial, and afterwards continued to keep her as a servant.  Her son Jim grew up with their own children.  When he was four years of age his mother, Singing Stream, died, and Sally persuaded her husband to take young Jim into their own home, partly as a sop to neighborly criticism, partly as a salve to her own conscience.  Sally had children of her own, and looked at things differently now from the time when she fought the squaw for Rodney’s favor.