The chief looked at me a minute, then he said quietly: “What is the trouble between you and mother?”
“Well, she won’t let me play,” I said; “she makes me come in every night before dark. The other boys stay out; I don’t see why I can’t.”
“Mother knows why,” he said. “You should be good to her and mind her; she is good to you—better than she ever was to me.”
Mother had come in again. “Yagaki,” she said, “you must not stay out after dark. Those papooses might kill you. They have been trained to think it is an honor to kill a white man. If they could do it without being seen, they would just as soon put an arrow through you as not. I know what is best for you, Yagaki. You must come when I call.”
I always obeyed her after that, and we got along very well. She was a dear old mother to me.
“I went flying toward the creek.”
CHAPTER EIGHT THE CROWS
As winter began to break up we got ready to move to the spring hunting grounds, but when we rounded up our horses we found that about fifty head of the best ones were missing. The Crow Indians had stolen them. Our Indians found their trail and followed them, but the Crows had so much the start that our braves could not overtake them. We never recovered our animals. Among the lost horses were six that belonged to mother and eleven of Washakie’s horses. My little pinto was not missing, for I had kept him close to camp with the horses we had used during the winter.
Our Indians were angry. They declared that they would get even with the Crows before another winter had passed. And I suppose they did it, for the two tribes were constantly stealing from each other. The Crows would steal every horse they could from the Shoshones; and our Indians would do the same with them. It was as fair for one tribe as it was for the other. They would fight, too, every time they met. Each tribe was always on the watch to get the advantage over the other; so we were in a constant state of excitement, and war dances were going on all the time.