.......
It was past midnight when the priest was awakened from his sleep by a knock on the door. He wrapped his great buffalo-coat about him, and answered the summons. Without in the damp darkness stood Pierre.
“Father,” he cried, “Ninon has sent for you. Since she left you, she has been very ill. I have done what I could; but now she hardly speaks, but I make out that she wants you.” Ten minutes later, they were in Ninon's cabin. When Father de Smet looked at her he knew she was dying. He had seen the Indians like that many times during the winter. It was the plague, but driven in to prey upon the system by the exposure. The Parisienne's teeth were set, but she managed to smile upon her visitor as he threw off his coat and bent over her. He poured some whiskey for her; but she could not get the liquid over her throat.
“Do not,” she said fiercely between those set white teeth, “do not forget the lilies.” She sank back and fixed her glazing eyes on the antlers, and kept them there watching those dangling silken scarves, while the priest, in haste, spoke the words for the departing soul.
The next morning she lay dead among those half barbaric relics of her coquetry, and two white lilies with hearts of gold shed perfume from an altar in a wilderness.
Up the Gulch
“GO West?” sighed Kate. “Why, yes! I'd like to go West.”
She looked at the babies, who were playing on the floor with their father, and sighed again.
“You've got to go somewhere, you know, Kate. It might as well be west as in any other direction. And this is such a chance! We can't have mamma lying around on sofas without any roses in her cheeks, can we?” He put this last to the children, who, being yet at the age when they talked in “Early English,” as their father called it, made a clamorous but inarticulate reply.
Major Shelly, the grandfather of these very young persons, stroked his mustache and looked indulgent.