“He couldn’t say anything until we’d been and come,” said Loseis coolly. “Anyhow, I’m not afraid of my father. My spirit is as strong as his. He can’t shout me down!”
“No! No!” reiterated the red girl. “If you go after him like that, he think little of you.”
In her heart Loseis recognized the truth of this, and she fell into a sullen silence. After awhile she said: “Then I will make him come back here. I will send a message. . . . Oh, not a letter, you foolish girl!” she added in response to Mary-Lou’s startled look.
“What kind of message?”
“I will make a little raft and send it floating down on the current,” said Loseis dreamily. “I will set up a little stick on the raft, with a ribbon tied to it, a piece of my hair. I think that will bring him back . . .”
“Maybe it float past his camp in the nighttime,” said Mary-Lou, in her soft, sad voice. “How you know?”
“Then I will send down two,” said Loseis. “One in the day and one in the night. He will see one of them.”
Mary-Lou was astonished by the cleverness of this idea.
“And then when he comes back,” said Loseis quite coolly. “I will say that I did not send it. I will say that it is a custom of the red girls to make offerings to the Spirit of the River. I think that will make him feel pretty small. But I shall not laugh at him. Oh, no! I shall be very polite; polite and proud as Blackburn’s daughter ought to be. And I shall send him away again.”
Mary-Lou looked somewhat dubious as to the feasibility of this program; but held her tongue.