“I was only digging medicine,” the elf soberly announced. [Page 209.]
“We’ll take it to show Grandmother,” declared the one so favored, whose botanical studies had already suggested to her to penetrate, if possible, the mysteries of the Dakota herbalist. She seized his little, earth-stained hand and all three set out for the camp—a huddle of log cabins, looking for all the world like the “cob houses” of children, interspersed with an occasional brush arbor or rude corral, and with many of the white, conical teepees of the Sioux.
Glimpsed in the distance, under a sky quivering with heat and against a wide background of sunburnt grass, the whole looked more like a toy village than anything real and serious, at all events to the new-comer, who, with all her earnestness of purpose, had fallen to some degree under the spell of that colorful, elemental existence.
The zest of the open spaces and the free winds, the absence of clocks and bells and whistles and other insistent reminders and regulators of our time-slavery, the fascinating simplicity and friendliness of the dark-faced, smiling people—her people—in their easy, picturesque garb, all these had seemed so restful, so almost intoxicating, after the set tasks of many well-ordered years.
When they reached camp and threw down their burdens under the shade of a large arbor of boughs, where an old woman with gray witch-locks flying loose and a skin like dark-brown parchment looked up from her eternal moccasin-mending, and a long-haired dog not much bigger than a rat flew to greet them with all but articulate cries of joy—then, indeed, they were at home!
“Sh-h-h-Sheka!” Blue Earth was tired and hungry, and drove off the dog with a rush of angry sibilants.
“Here, Sheka, Sheka! Poor little thing,” coaxed Yellow Star, pitifully.
“How many did you get?” demanded Grandmother, reaching greedily for the sack. “The Blue-Coat has been here with a paper; I think it is from the Little Father. I gave him coffee and bread, and he told me all the news. Here is the paper,” and she drew it from her wide sleeve and held it toward the girl.
Yellow Star took the agent’s letter and glanced it over as she stood, while the others, Chaskay and Sheka included, gazed steadily into her thoughtful face with frank curiosity.