“I could have stayed with Little Coyote’s woman.”
“We orter have done it, too. Look at them cayuses stumblin’ along! Say, we won’t git in before ’leven or twelve at this gait, and I’m so hungry I don’t know where I’m goin’ to sleep to-night.”
“Little Coyote’s woman gifted me some sa’vis berries.”
“Aw, sa’vis berries! I can’t go sa’vis berries,” growled Meeteetse. “They’re too sweet. The only way they’re fit to eat is to dry ’em and pound ’em up with jerked elk—then they ain’t bad eatin’. I’ve et ’most ev’ry thing in my day. I’ve et wolf, and dog, and old mountain billy-goat, and bull-snakes, and grasshoppers, so you kin see I ain’t finnicky, but I can’t stummick sa’vis berries.” He asked querulously: “What’s ailin’ of you?”
The Indian woman, who had been studying the black clouds as they drifted across the sky to dim the starlight, said in a half-whisper:
“The clouds no look good to me. They look like enemies playin’ wolf. I feel as if somethin’ goin’ happen.”
The bare suggestion of the supernatural was sufficient to alarm Meeteetse. He asked in a startled voice:
“How do you feel?”
“I feel sad. My heart drags down to de ground, and it seem like de dark hide somethin’.”
Meeteetse elongated his neck and peered fearfully into the darkness.