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"Yes, Joe; and to pay the interest on that price was the bane of my existence for a dozen years. But you can write now. Our dear mother—God bless her!—would forget all the terrible past if she could hold you in her arms once more. It is your duty to return at once, and settle, as well as you can, for the trouble you have caused. You ought at least to lift that accursed mortgage from the farm, and let Lije Robinson and Sister Mary and our parents spend the remainder of their lives in peace. You are a free man, and can go where you please."

"But I am not a free man, John. Even with that horrible load off my shoulders, I still am bound, hand and foot."

"Are you married, Joe?"

"Yes, John. You see, when a fellow is in hiding among the Indians, with a price set upon his head, and is therefore afraid to go home, he's nothing but a fugitive from justice; he expects to spend his life there, and never see the face of another white woman; and when there are scores of pretty Indian girls in sight—"

John Ranger jumped to his feet, his fists clinched and his eyes glaring.

"You don't mean to tell me that my brother is married to—to a—squaw?"

There was ineffable scorn in his tone and manner. It was now Joe's turn to sink upon the ground and bury his face in his hands. When he again looked at his brother, there was an expression of age and anguish upon his face which had not been there before.

"I am the husband of an Indian woman, and the father of seven half-breed children," he said with the air of a guilty man on trial for his life. "But there are extenuating circumstances, John. My wife was no common squaw. If you care for me at all, you will not apply that epithet to the mother of my children. She was the daughter of a Mandan chief, who had large dealings with the Hudson Bay Company, and who sent her to England