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 "You can count on me to the last button of my jeans, boys. I used to know some Chouteaus up by Westport—might you be related to that crowd,"

"Distantly related," Fannie replied, speaking in a low voice. She felt uncomfortable under the eyes of Sallie McCoy, although without reason apparently, for Sallie had opened the Kansas City paper and seemed oblivious to all outside its pages.

"Them folks was French-Indians, and good business men, too. I don't recall now what tribe they belonged to, but they all went off to the Nation a long time ago."

"My people are Shawnees," said Fannie, sure of herself there, for it was entirely true.

Sallie McCoy turned her eyes upward to look over the top of the paper as Fannie spoke, and sat studying the masquerader a moment. Fannie stood with her back to Sallie, facing Uncle Boley across the little counter, Texas over by the door.

From where he stood Hartwell watched Sallie's behavior with alarm, for her close reading of the paper was only a sham and a pretense to cover her close scrutiny of the stranger from the Nation. When Fannie was not speaking, Sallie's eyes were decorously on the paper; when she spoke, they lifted, although the position of her face did not change. But there was nothing of suspicion, wonder, even curiosity in the look which she swept over