“You, Joe—you tell me to forget?” cried the boy, in amazement. “Why, it was not long ago you tried to make me remember. You would not let me forget. You told me of the sunlight playing on the bosom of the lake I love—of the moonshine making a silver path across the water. You told me of the birds, and squirrels, and wild things I used to call round me. You told me of the silent mountains piled against the sky. And then you told me of Felicia, Little Star Eyes, whom I heard calling to me night after night in my dreams. It was you who aroused my mad longing to go back to my home—and to Felicia!”
Gravely Old Joe squatted on the carpeted floor, taking out his black pipe and beginning to fill it.
“Heap so,” he confessed.
“But now——”
“Heap diffrunt.”
“You want me to forget those things—you, you?” panted Dick, starting up and staring at the cool redskin. “It’s not like you, Joe!”
“Ugh!” grunted the old fellow, as he stuffed the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. “No git excite’.”
“I can’t help it! This city lays on me like an awful load. It is more terrible than anything of which I ever dreamed! Sometimes, when on the street, I feel that I am being crowded and smothered, and I have hard work to breathe.”
“Bad for you,” said Crowfoot, producing a match; “heap wuss for me. You young; me old. I live heap long time where plent’ room. City crowd big much.”