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treated him as if he were the son they had never had.
    One day during the third spring Dev had spent with them, Jared sat him down for a talk. He complimented Devon his ability to learn quickly, praising the sharp, natural intelligence he displayed, but reminding him that although he had been raised by the Blackfoot, his heritage was white, not Indian.
    "I know your loyalty to the tribe, son," he said and added sadly, "don't forget I once lived with them, too. They're good people, but I'm only being realistic when I say their time is running out. I saw it over twenty years ago ... believe me, Gray Hawk knows it, too." He went on to say that Dev owed it to himself to make a place in the world in which his true parents had belonged. "With a little tutoring, you'd be fine college material, Dev. I'll see to it that you have everything you need. There are several good schools in the East. All I ask is that you give it a try ... as a favor to Mariah and me."
    Dev protested, offering a number of objections, but in the end he had agreed, unwilling to disappoint either Jared or Mariah. The school they selected was in Massachusetts, a small college with a good reputation among the more elite. He lasted a year, found that he enjoyed the classes and absorbed as much learning as he could before the confining atmosphere of the city and the proper, conservative sons of wealthy men began to make him feel stifled. When his longing for the open country of Montana and the company of more earthy, honest people became too strong to resist, he quit, wrote a letter to Jared explaining his reasons and headed home.
    Jared had never in any way condemned him for quitting. In fact, when he saw him again that spring, he praised Dev for sticking it out for a full year and told him he noticed a difference in his bearing, an assurance that had come from exposure to a different type of people, a different set of values.
    After a while Dev too came to understand what Jared meant. He had changed. Before, his lack of trust had made him uneasy in the company of whites, despite the fact that he was white himself. Now, though he liked them no better, he was easy in their midst, knowing he could handle himself as well as he could in the Indian life he had grown up with.

    Nearing the town, his horse whinnied as he caught the scent of people and other animals, and Dev was drawn from his daydreams. They had reminded him of what he owed Jared, and his ill humor dropped away. The very least he could do was be polite to the girl and make sure she had nothing to worry about during her stay. Jared had not gone into the specific reasons for the visit, other than to say that his usually level-headed daughter had developed an exceptionally strong sense of independence since she had been widowed, and perhaps Dev could talk some sense into her.
    Langdon was a small town that had been built up to serve a scattered community of ranchers. Its main street was bedraggled and dusty, a hodgepodge of false-fronted stores that made the small buildings look far more imposing than they were. On one side of the street, the livery, dry goods store, dressmaker's, and several other small businesses seemed to huddle together in respectability. On the opposite side a saloon-dancehall mocked the town's more conservative merchants. Next to it were the sheriff's office, the stage depot, and the small drugstore run by Langdon's often inebriated doctor, Grayson T. Gibbs.
    At the far end of town, a small, spired church shared a rise of land with Langdon's cemetery.
    The few children in the surrounding area used the church's Sunday Bible classroom as a school.
    As usual, the early afternoon was quiet. There were a few townspeople on the streets, some elderly men playing checkers in front of the store, and as he pulled his mount , to a half and tied the reins to a post by the stage depot, Dev was amused to see Doc Gibbs enter his office, his stride characteristically unsteady.
    He looked up the street,