“You ought to be very proud of your wife, Joe.”
“I am beginning to be. Yet you never can tell what the Indian nature will attempt. She seems to be all right when she lives with white people, but she’d lapse at once into barbarism again if she got a chance. They all do it. It is in the blood.”
“She doesn’t seems to want that sort of a chance, Joe.”
“An Indian is like a wild coyote, John.”
“But you have caught a tame one, Joe. She is above the average, even of white women. Give her the chance she craves. Stand by her like a gentleman. She is as thoroughly civilized as any of us.”
“Did you see her at the trading-post last summer?”
“No; but why do you ask?”
“Because you would have beheld her in her native element. You may capture and tame a coyote, but when you turn him loose among his natural environments, you can’t distinguish him in a short time from the wildest wolf of the pack.”
“That being the case, there is strong need for keeping your wife in her adopted home, among your own people.”
John was thawing toward his brother at a rapid rate; and Joseph, the erring but encouraged and repenting brother, felt a pang of remorse as he arose to welcome his wife and children upon their return from their drive, resolving in his heart that he would never again allow himself to regret the vows he had taken upon himself in his early manhood.