ghost dance in the camp to-night, and everything will be so strange and frightful, like a nightmare that I once had at home.

"A cold storm is coming on, and we must both be very brave. You will have to stand out in the rain, and if I hear you whinnying for your nice warm stall and sweet delicious oats, I'll have to cry in spite of all.

"There'll be some dreadful strangers in the tent for supper, and while they're sitting on the ground, eating mush and squirrel with their fingers, I shall all the time be trying not to think about the lovely dining-room at home, where the soft light will be falling from the chandelier on the snowy table, with its pretty china and its sparkling glass and silver.

“O, Chipmunk, Chipmunk! are you homesick day and night, and every hour, and every minute? I am sure you are, you look so woefully forlorn. Your mane and tail are snarled with burs, and your coat is very frowzy, for I have no currycomb and brush to keep you sleek. But I love you more than ever, if you're not the handsome little fellow every one admired so much at home."

She dropped a few pathetic tears on the tangled mane, and Chipmunk gently pawed the ground and gave a soft appreciative whinny, as if he fully understood the trying situation, and was grateful to his little mistress for her warm devotion to himself, regardless of his changed condition.

Piokee then applied herself to picking out the burs, as she had often done before, since Chipmunk had become a gypsy pony.

While thus engaged, she chanced to glance around, and saw the queer youth picketing a pony to a tree near by.

She wondered if he had observed the little scene between herself and Chipmunk, and overheard what she had said.

He raised his savage headgear with a touch of civilized ease, and stepping up to Chipmunk viewed the tangled mane with dubious eyes. "That's a big job, and perhaps you'd like some help," observed he. "But I don't know if 'twill pay. There's plenty more to stick to him when these are pulled out," was his rather shiftless afterthought.

So welcome to Piokee was the boy's straight English, spoken in a clear, though careless tone, that she forgave the half-indifferent air with which he offered his assistance.

"Thank you," she responded, as he went to work, not very zealously, on the pony's tail. "It is a task, but not so great as others I have undertaken," with a little sigh.

The boy regarded her with questioning scrutiny, then leisurely picked out a bur and tossed it in the air.

"Are you a runaway?" he asked, with a curious stress on the personal pronoun.

CHAPTER XIII.

AN ESCAPED LUNATIC.

"ARE you?" Piokee quizzed back, warding off his question.

"Yes," he frankly owned. "An escaped lunatic. The Messiah craze, you know. The papers said the fellows were vamosing from the others schools, so I shot out between two days. I've come to help the Indians fight the white men."

"And I," said she, "have come to fight the Indian."

"Whew! that sounds loyal," he exclaimed with much surprise. "When may we look for the first outbreak?" somewhat jeeringly.

"It has taken place already," said Piokee calmly. "I've convinced one good little woman who was pining for the new way, but didn't know just how to make a start, that hominy is better boiled in salted water than in bacon brine, that beans should be picked over very carefully, and washed and rinsed before they're stewed, and that the kettle, and tin plates, and spoons need cleaning after every meal."

"Oh! a missionary cook. Well, you won't exterminate us that way," and the boy threw back his head and gave a mocking laugh. "See here," he added, growing serious, "the men were all on fire to hear about the pillaging and burning, how the dancers were raising the cowboys' hair, and how the cowardly fellows were rushing helter-skelter to Ben Libbit's

ranch, too scared to keep about their business. Why didn't you read the full report?

"I didn't dare," Piokee said. "I knew the men were very much excited, and was afraid they'd start right out to follow the example of the Northern Indians, and do something dreadful to the Oklahoma settlers. But how do

you

66

know I didn't read it all?" Had the paper in my pocket, and knew it word for word. Bought it yesterday in Oklahoma City, where I stopped to trade my silver watch for that ungainly little beast I had to have to reach the camp. Heard there was to be a ghost dance here, and made a rush to be in time to take part in the fun. Meant to read the paper to the men myself. It's a wonder they would listen to a girl. Indians don't believe in women's mixing up in politics," and the youth assumed a lofty tone. "That was a dangerous game you tried," he added warningly. "The men were waiting very anxiously to hear of an uprising in the North, and if they knew you'd skipped the best part they'd take you for an enemy to the cause. Shouldn't wonder if they'd even think there was a spy in camp, especially those western savages that are working up the ghost dance craze."

Piokee was quite startled at this possible grave result of her omission. She had thought it but a harmless strategem to check the fire until the ghost dance had been held.

Well," said she, "I am at your mercy, if you choose to read the paper to the men yourself. The rumor of the outbreak may be false, and even if it be true, I thought the less said of it to-day the better, though of course they'll hear it very soon."

The boy reached inside his coat, drew out the paper from a pocket bulging from one hip, tore it into shreds, and stuffed it carefully into a woodchuck's hole near by.

"I'll have a long ride to town to-morrow for another paper, but 'twill let you out and I shall get a later one. By that time there'll be news worth reading, and 'twill be huge fun to start out with the Cheys and Raps as a Messiah reader."

"Are those wild strangers Cheyennes and Arapahoes?" Piokee asked.

"I'd

"I hope so," was the warlike answer. like to help wipe out the Oklahoma settlers and make a raid across the Kansas border."

"O, no, no! you surely wouldn't wish to do that," she exclaimed in horror. "I have friends there on the border the dearest friends in all the world; I should be distracted if I thought they were in danger."

Again the look of quizzical curiosity, as if Piokee's history would be of interest to the youth.

"Perhaps you've been at school over there, and found the white folks friendly," he surmised. "The pale-faced fellows treated me first-rate at school, and I was chummy with a few of them. 'Twill seem a little queer to have to take their scalps, if any of them ever fall into my clutches on the war-path."

"You must have been at school a good while," said Piokee, seeing very plainly that this civilized young backslider was no raw recruit in the compulsory education ranks.

"From a little chap of eight. I'm seventeen now," he answered wearily. "Doctor took me East just after father died". Piokee gave a little start "put me into trousers and a straight-jacket, and I haven't drawn a free breath since, till now. I was at Haskell Institute four years after Doctor got through college in the East, and for the last two years I've been in torture at a white boys' Agricultural School. I've worked out, or shirked out, summers on a farm in one place and another. They grind us red-skinned fellows through the routine mill, you know. Doctor was afraid the wild Indian fever would break out in me worse than ever, if I once got back to the Reservation. He expects to make a big two-section farmer out of me. Imagine how 'twill strike

"I am Piokee, but I'm not a goody-goody girl," she answered humbly, "I ought not to find one word of fault with you, for I'm a runaway myself."

"Oh! ah! Well, well! I'm very, very sorry you are here in this way," laughed the mocking scapegrace, with a burst of whimsical delight.

"But I couldn't help it," she exclaimed. Then came the story of her flight from home.

Nao listened with the keenest interest, and tossed up two burs, when he had heard the whole, in warm applause of Cold Blast's course. "Your father understands his hieroglyphics," he remarked with satisfaction. "There should be a gathering in of all the children of the tribes. The Messiah will want to find us on the Reservation, when he comes to turn things upside down."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE GHOST DANCE.

AN enormous pile of brush had been collected by the squaws, to feed the two bonfires that threw their glare across the magic circle wherein the ghost dancers were to hold their orgies.

In the hasty preparation for the dance, ghost robes were beyond the reach of many, but one Messiah-crazed devotee sacrificed his cotton tent to furnish winding sheets, in which a number of the dancers wrapped themselves.

"Whatever should we do if father were to strip our tent in pieces?" Piokee said to Fauqua, as from the door of their tepee they

watched the shrouded forms that wore the ghost robes, gliding to and fro before the dance began. "Our neighbors have no room to spare, but a storm is coming, and we'd have to crowd in somewhere. How forlorn we'd feel.” "The Messiah is expected when the pigeons turn round on their roosts at midnight," said Nao, bursting on her vision in full ghost-dance rig. "He'll fix things up all right, and give us regular Fourth of July weather. Tepees will spring up at the waving of his wand, and our departed ancestors will flock back from the happy hunting grounds, driving herds of deer and buffalo. There'll be no lack of elbow-room, for all the whites will be exterminated in a jiffy, their towns gulped down by one tremendous earthquake, and the reds will hold the fort alone, precisely as they did before Columbus poked his nose into the Indians' affairs."

Nao had cast off his coat and vest, and wore a strip of tent cloth pinned with thorns around him for a ghost shirt. He had rolled his trousers to the knee, his feet and legs were bare, likewise his arms and head. His face was streaked with yellow paint, and the buzzard quills had emigrated from his hat-crown to his scalp-lock. Wound around his waist were cords of grape-vine, under which was tucked a fringe of squirrel tails. A tuft of hair resembling human locks, but really red fox-fur, dangled from a string about his neck. The look of merry mockery was still on his face, in curious contrast to the fierceness of his make-up.

"Do you think I'll do?" said he, straightening proudly up in huge enjoyment of Piokee's look of horror.

"You are truly hideous, and you couldn't. have chosen a surer way to heap disgrace on your brother," she replied with gentle scorn.

"Humph!" ejaculated Nao, with a real Indian grunt. "My brother heaps disgrace on me by turning a cold shoulder to the ghost dance picnic. He pretends to be an O. K. Indian, but he is a white man from his standing collar to his gaiters. Shouldn't wonder if he'd try to bleach his skin, next thing, and raise a blonde mustache. Bah! an Indian is a played-out curiosity without his paint and feathers, and his scalping knife and war-whoop."

Seeing words were useless, Piokee turned away in silent disapproval, while Nao took his place among the dancers.

Happily, Cold Blast's Messiah fervor did not rise to such a pitch that he contributed his tepee for ghost robes. It remained a place of shelter, and into it Piokee crept with Nanno, while Fauqua joined the squaws and girls who sat on the ground behind the dancers, and raised their voices in a weird monotonous howl. They were accompanied by the tomtom, beaten by an aged brave, whose dancing days were over.

Up, and other embryo warriors, occupied the middle ground, between the dancers and the squaws and girls, gloating on the spectacle and envying their sires and elder brothers the exalted privilege of joining in the revel.

"Nanno," said Piokee, sinking down before the tent fire, with her arms about the child, "the craze has seized the camp, and the ghost dance has begun. Father is a dancer; Up is looking on and wishing he were old enough to be one, too. Dr. Whistler's brother is in the dreadful scrape, and mother is among the singers. She can't help believing in the Indian Messiah, like all the rest who've gone stark crazy, though I'm sure she doesn't want to in her heart of hearts. She knows the dear Lord Jesus loves the Indian, and will take care of us and give us all we need as he thinks best. She knows it, Nanno, but she has forgotten it just now. But we must not forget it for a single instant. Nanno, Nanno, do you understand? The dear Lord Jesus is the true Messiah and the only one to help the Indian."

"I care," said Nanno, with her solemn eyes uplifted to Piokee's.

"Yes; you may care now, you must care; you are not too young to care for this." Her voice grew intense in its appeal. "Out of the mouth of babes hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies " came to her, words she had so often read with Mamma Prairie.

But a strange unrest had seized Piokee. Through the flapping curtain at the door of the tepee she could see the whirling figures of the dancers, and she suddenly became possessed of a desire to be near them with

her eyes upon the terrible but fascinating spectacle.

What was the meaning of it all? she asked herself in breathless fright. The superstitious spirit of her race was it taking hold of her like all the rest, and was there no escape?

Grasping Nanno's hand she rushed into the open air, and smothering a wild desire to join the singers and lift up her voice with theirs, she retreated far into the background, where she threw herself on a bed of leaves against a log, hugging Nanno in her arms.

Yes; the frenzy was upon her, and her faith in Jesus was fast slipping from her. Nothing more than empty words now seemed the prayers she had been taught to offer up at Mamma Prairie's knee. If Jesus was the Indian's Messiah, why had he so long forgotten them, and left them as the pitiless outcasts of a scornful world? There must be a new Messiah, who would have a heart to love and pity even the unlovable, forbidding Indian.

Ah! yes, in very truth the new Messiah was coming. She almost fancied she could hear the rustle of his feet among the wind-tossed leaves, and the music of his voice above the pandemonium of the ghost dance.

A rustle of feet there surely was, and Piokee started with an eager tremor as she heard it close behind her.

A man had ridden up on horseback, and was now dismounting with an agile spring.

The bonfires threw long flickering rays into the rear, and by their light Piokee saw a straight, lithe figure which she knew at once, although his face was turned from her, as he fastened his horse's bridle to a tree.

"O, my chief! my chief!" she cried, dropping Nanno from her lap, and starting up to clasp her hands about his arm. "The new Messiah is coming we think he will be here at midnight, and the ghost dance will be kept up till he comes. Don't you see them over there?" pointing to the whirling, swaying figures of the frenzied dancers. "They are growing more and more in earnest. He must surely hear their cries and come to-night."

"I should think so- if he's ever coming. Those howls would raise the roof of the firma

ment, and penetrate the region of the ghosts if it were possible. I heard them miles away," said Dr. Whistler dryly, as he turned and faced Piokee. He showed no more surprise at seeing her in this strange situation, than if the meeting had been previously arranged.

"Oh! you don't believe it," said Piokee, beneath the spell and shocked by his lack of reverence. "But I do.. I have been converted since the dance began. And we all do father, mother, Up, and even little Nanno or she will as soon as I can make her understand. And you mustn't try to change my faith. You would be very cruel if you did." She was trembling with excitement, and her face, across which swept a red glow from the bonfires, wore a rapt, exalted look.

66

Well, well, dear child, believe it, if you must, a little while," said Dr. Whistler soothingly, "and I will share your vigil, if you are resolved to watch for the Messiah who can never come, alas! for our deluded people," he was about to add, but checked himself, remembering her appeal that he would not attempt to change her faith. “But you have on no wrap and you are shivering like a leaf." She had left her ulster in the tent. "I must throw a shawl about you."

Stepping to his horse, he reached into his right-hand saddle-bag, took out a long, warm shawl, and wrapped Piokee in its fleecy folds. "Oh! this is nice and soft, and so sweetsmelling." she exclaimed, drawing it about her in a kind of dazed delight. "Why," she bent to look at it and stroked it softly, coming slowly to herself, "it looks and feels like Mamma Prairie's shawl." She snatched it off and held it up between the fire-light and her eyes, then

gave a quick, pathetic little cry, and hugged it tightly in her arms. "It is the dear, warm pretty shawl, that Miriam and I have snuggled in so often we two sitting out on the piazza steps to watch the stars! It smells of violets, like all of Mamma Prairie's lovely things." She held it to her face and hungrily inhaled the faint delicious odor. “O, the precious shawl, and precious Miriam and Mamma Prairie! Did they send it with their love, and did you bring it straight from home? Why, I am all back again!" she spoke as one awaking from a dream. "There is no new Messiah. The dear Lord Jesus loves the Indian, but oh! I am so homesick, and I must go home." Sinking down, she hid herself beneath the violet-scented shawl, and moaned and wept.

"I care," said Nanno, squatting by her side, a timid, patient little figure, not venturing to intrude within the sacred cover of the shawl.

Piokee took her quickly in, and wet the red hood with another gush of tears.

Dr. Whistler whisked out his handkerchief; but turned away, and let her ease her heart by crying till the fountain of her tears ran dry.

He fixed his eyes with much anxiety on the ghost dance, that had now become a perfect bedlam, the dark, fierce faces of the dancers gleaming with exultant fire, their bodies swaying faster and still faster, in fantastic rhythm to the hubbub of the chant. The dancers joined their voices with the singers, each according to his gift of speech, expressing his uncomplimentary opinion of the white man, and imploring the Messiah to make a speedy end of him.

It was thus that Dr. Whistler found Piokee among her people, and how he recalled her. But her mission was only just begun.

Theodora R. Jenness.

I

SAW a ship with canvas spread Against the softly curving blue; It shone, a fair sea-picture, then Dropped sudden from my view,

I know not where; I only know

I see the glint of sails no more —

Yet sure I am that ship will find
Safe moorings on another shore.
Mary F. Butts.