Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/168



T WAS early afternoon when Jolie awoke. "See, I my sweet, what Meg has for you," said Mistress Pearson, smiling down at the girl, eyes twinkling in her tanned, lined face. Jolie, blinking sleepy lids, beheld a fringed buckskin shirt, new and spotless, elaborately inset with red and blue, belted with green.

"I bought it six months ago," Meg continued, "of a half-breed woman in the Chicasaw nation, and I intended it for a slim lad I know at Fort Prince George. It has never been worn and it should fit you fairly well."

Jolie donned it gleefully; the buckskin leggins, too, that Meg had magically provided; but the smallest pair of moccasins upon which Mistress Pearson had been able to lay her hands were much too large for Jolie's feet, so for the present she must stick to her own riding boots. A broad-brimmed hat of soft beaver skin, dyed green, into which Meg had thrust a jaunty feather from a wild turkey's wing, completed the girl's new costume; and when she stepped out of the tent and made her bow, Lachlan, who was waiting just without, saw not a woman but a slim, straight