“To school?”
She shook her head.
“I’m goin’ to hunt up Dad’s relations; and when I find ’em, I don’t want ’em to be ashamed of me, and of him for marryin’ into the Injuns.”
“They need never be ashamed of you, Susie.”
“Honest? Honest, don’t you think so?” She looked at him wistfully. “I’d try awful hard not to make breaks,” she went on, “and make ’em feel like cachin’ me in the cellar when they saw company comin’. It’s just plumb awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for something or somebody—for other kind of folks besides Injuns and grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer kind of bug, and laugh at you with their eyes.
“Dad’s got kin, I know; for lots of times when I would go with him to hunt horses, he would say, ‘I’ll take you back to see them some time, Susie, girl.’ But he never said where ’back’ was, so I’ve got to find out myself. Wouldn’t it be awful, though”—and her chin quivered—“if after I’d been on the trail for days and days, and my ponies were foot-sore, they wasn’t glad to see me when I rode up to the house, but hinted around that horse-feed was short and grub was scarce, and they couldn’t well winter me?”
“They wouldn’t do that,” said McArthur reassuringly. “Nobody named MacDonald would do that.”
Susie began to untie the pasteboard box which contained her treasures.
“Nearly ever since Dad died, I’ve been getting ready to go. I don’t mean that I would leave Mother for keeps—of course not; but after I’ve found ’em, maybe I can coax ’em to come and live with us. I used to ask White Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after they’d sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I’ll have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first I’ll go to Selkirk.
“I’ll take a good pack-outfit, and Running Rabbit to find trails and wrangle horses. See—I’ve got my trail all marked out on the map.”