THE young Shawanoe smiled, shook his head and looked into the keen eyes before him.

“Deerfoot thanks his brother, but he never tasted of liquor and will die before he wets his lips with it.”

The amazement of the trapper was not without its humorous feature. He remained leaning toward the youth, his hand outstretched with the uncorked flask in it and staring at him as if literally paralyzed. Then he drew a deep breath, swung back and exclaimed:

“Wal, I’ll be skulped! You’re the first Injin I ever seed that wouldn’t sell his moccasins for a swaller of red eye. It gits me!”

Deerfoot watched him with amused interest. Jack Halloway held up the flask at arm’s length and surveyed it thoughtfully. Once he started to place it to his lips, but shook his head, then jammed the cork back in place (the screwed tops were unknown in those days) and thrust the flask into his pocket again.

“Ef you won’t drink with me, Shawanoe, I won’t drink afore you.”

“Let my brother do as he feels like doing.”

“Which the same is what I’ve done. As I was sayin’, I allers take a keg of the extract of happiness with me and manage things so it will last till I get back to St. Louis; but bein’ as I stayed longer than usual, I’ve come so near running out that that flask has got to keep me alive for some weeks to come. I tell you it’s powerful tough, but there’s no help for it. Every trapper or hunter that I run across—if I run across any—will be as bad off as me.”

“When my brother gets to St. Louis what will he do with his peltries!”

“Why, sell ’em, of course. What did you think?”

“He has a good many,” remarked Deerfoot, glancing at the piles on the ground near at hand.

“You’re right. It has been a good season, and them skins is vallyble. There’s one black fox that’s the same as a hundred dollars to me, and the rest will bring three hundred dollars more.”

“My brother has much money saved from his labor.”

“Much money! Not a blamed cent, though I orter have. Shawanoe, the biggest fools—I admit it—is we trappers, who spend winters in the mountains, freezin’, starvin’ and dodging redskins, and then travel hundreds of miles to git back to St. Louis, where we can sell our peltries as quick as a wink. Then we go onto a big, glorious spree, and at the end of a week or two haven’t enough left to buy a plug of ’backer. We loaf around, doin’ ’nough odd jobs to keep us from starvin’ till the weather begins to git cold, when we’re off for the mountains agin. And so it goes year after year, and we’re fools to the end.”

“Is my brother alone in the world?”

“Lucky I haven’t any wife or children, but I’ve got the best old mother that ever drawed breath. She has a little home which she manages to hold onto by takin’ in sewin’ and doin’ little fancy things for the neighbors, who be kind to her. If they warn’t I don’t know what would become of her, for I’m no good; I don’t deserve such a mother,” added the trapper with a sigh, “for she is never as happy as when I’m with her, and she’d work her fingers off for me. ’Bout all she does is work and pray, and never an unkind word to say to her good for nothin’ son.”

“By and by she will close her eyes and go to the Great Spirit, and when my brother walks into the little home she will be gone and”——

“Thar! thar! Don’t say nothin’ more!” interrupted the trapper with a wave of his hand. “I can’t stand it. If I go back home and find her dead, as I ’spose I shall some day, I’ll die myself; if I don’t, I’ll blow my worthless brains out, for I won’t want to live.”

“My brother longs to see his mother again. If he should kill himself or do wrong he will never see her more. Let him live right and they shall dwell together forever. Let him go back to St. Louis and drink no more. Let him give the money to the mother who loves her son and has suffered much for him. Then my brother will make her face shine with happiness, and she will live much longer.”

Jack Halloway turned his head and stared at Deerfoot for a full minute without stirring or speaking. The Shawanoe kept his gaze upon the fire, but he knew the scrutiny he was under, and he “waited.” When the trapper spoke it was in a low voice, as if addressing himself:

“To think of an Injin talkin’ that way to Jack Halloway! Why, I never had a white man do it; but his words are as true as gospel. Fact is, they are gospel.”

He relapsed into a reverie which lasted so long that Deerfoot gently interposed.

“My brother tells me that his mother prays. Does my brother pray?”

Jack started and again stared at the dusky youth.

“This beats all creation. Yas, I used to pray, but it was a long time ago, when I was a younker and bowed my head at my mother’s knee. I’ve been a wild, wicked scamp that ain’t worth the prayer of such an angel as she is. Shawanoe, do you pray?”

“Once when Deerfoot was a child he was as wicked as Satan himself; but he was made a prisoner by the palefaces. There was a good woman among them who told him about the Great Spirit who is a loving Father to all His children, and she taught him to pray to Him. Deerfoot prays to his Father every morning and night, and often through the day, and his Father always listens and does that which is best for him. Let my brother do the same. He will give him strength to drink that poison no more, and when he dies he will see his mother again.”

Again Jack Halloway asked himself whether he was awake or dreaming. He had heard in a vague way of the missionaries and their labors among the Indians. He had been told that there were some converts among the red men, but never until now had he seen one. Like most of his calling, he looked upon all Indians as bad, and therefore the implacable enemies of the white men. He had had more than one desperate encounter with them, and when he groped his way into the mountains it was always a contest of wits between him and them, with the prospects more than once against him. He looked upon them as he looked upon so many rattlesnakes, that were likely to be found coiled at any moment in his path.

And yet here was a full-blooded Indian talking to him better than he had ever heard any missionary talk. The trapper knew from the build, the alertness, the assurance of movement of the youth, and a certain something impossible to describe that he would be a terrific antagonist in a fight, but nothing seemed further from the Shawanoe’s thoughts. He talked with the persuasive gentleness of a woman, and in all his experience never had the grizzled trapper felt such an arrow pierce right into the core of his heart.

In a few simple words Deerfoot had drawn a vivid picture of that sweet, patient, forgiving, praying parent, waiting in her far-away home the return of the rough, profane, wicked son, for whom she was ready to sacrifice her life at any time, and, indeed, was sacrificing it to his thoughtlessness and indifference. Most astounding of all, the Shawanoe had held out a hope to him that he had never known of or in fact dreamed had an existence.