After a while the mosquitoes got so bad in the brush that I could not stay there, so when everything was still I crept out, but I did not know where to go or what to do. I sat down on a stump and tried to decide. I knew that there would be a racket in camp and I felt bad on account of mother, but I was not a bit sorry for the papoose I had hurt; just then I almost wished I had killed him. I had some pretty mean feelings as I sat there on the stump. I was more homesick than I had ever been before.
Bur. Am. Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
Indian girls carrying water.
It was not a very pleasant situation, I tell you, to be so far away from home among a lot of Indians who were mad at me. I did not know but that they would kill me. I was worried; but after thinking the matter over I decided that it would be better for me to go back and face the music.
When I got near camp I met a lot of Indians that mother had sent out to hunt me. They said that Washakie was also out trying to find me. When I asked them what the Indians were going to do to me, they said that they would do nothing, that I had done what any of them would have done. I told them that I was afraid that it would start another camp fight, but they laughed and said it would not. This made me feel much better.
When I reached camp, mother asked me where I had been. I told her and she said I was a foolish boy for running away like that. “Well,” I said, “I thought it might stop another camp fight if I went away.”
It was not long before Washakie returned. He gave me a long talk, telling me not to run away any more but to come to him if I got into trouble again. He would see that I did not get hurt. I told him that I thought I had better go home, for I was always getting into trouble and making it hard for mother and him. He told me he would not let me go home for that, but advised me to be a little more careful, as I might have killed the boy. “A rope tied to a wild horse and around a boy’s neck,” he said, “is not much fun for the boy.”
“Well I forgot about the rope’s being tied to the horse,” I said, “the boy made me so mad that I did not know what I was doing.”
Washakie said that the boy’s neck was badly skinned and that his father and mother were very angry about it, but that he would try to calm them. The other papooses who saw it thought that I did just right. The chief had a long talk with the boy’s parents, and I heard no more about it, but I saw the boy wearing a greasy rag about his neck, and whenever I came near, he would look very savagely at me.