“Poor sick Feather-man! Is you hurted now? Does your face ache you to make it screw itself all this way?” and she made a comical grimace, imitative of the sufferer’s expression.
“Ugh! Ugh!”
“Yes; Kitty hears. Other Mother, that is all the word he says. All the time it is just ‘Ugh! Ugh!’ I wish he would talk Kitty’s talk. Make him do it, Other Mother. Please!”
“That I cannot do. He knows it not. But he has a speech I understand. What need you, Spotted Adder?” she concluded, in his own dialect.
“Ugh! It is the voice of Wahneenah, the Happy. What does she here, in the lodge of the outcast? It is many a moon since the footfall of a woman sounded on my floor. Why does one come now?”
“In pursuit of this child, the adopted daughter of our tribe, whom the Black Partridge himself has given me. It was ill of you, accursed, to wile her hither with your unholy spells.”
“I wiled her not. It was the gray squirrel. Broken in his life, as am I, the once Mighty. Many wounded creatures seek shelter here. It is a sanctuary. They alone fear not the miserable one.”
“Does not the tribe see to it that you have food and drink set within your wigwam, once during each journey of the sun? I have so heard.”
“Ugh! Food and drink. Sometimes I cannot reach them. They are not even pushed beyond the door flap, or what is left of it. They are all afraid. All. Yet they are fools. That which has befallen me may happen to each when his time comes. It is the sickness of the bones. There is no contagion in it. But it twists the straight limbs into torturing curves and it rends the body with agony. One would be glad to die, but death—like friendship—holds itself aloof. Ugh! The drink! The drink!”