Of all the stories he used to tell me, and he knew a great many, I liked best to hear him recount the old stories out of the Bible. He was familiar with them all, and told them in a way that delighted me, for he fitted them to my notions. He made them very real. One day he read to me a story, but I could not understand it as well as when he told it in his own simple way, so I asked him not to read them to me any more. The time for the telling of stories was at night after Gray-beard had gone downstairs to his own rooms, having warned us against loud talking.
My friend always seemed happy, yet at times, particularly on Saturdays, I noticed he would appear sober, almost melancholy. He did not go home as the rest of us did, and I wondered at this very much. He had a way of disappearing about the time I was ready to start home, so I never had a chance to invite him to my house, as I had often intended to do. I tried a number of times to bring him to speak of himself, but he would throw me off that line of talk, and my curiosity went unsatisfied for a long time.
"Say, Brush, where do you live?" I asked one afternoon as we were in the belfry. "You don't go home Saturdays like the rest of us."
"There's a man on the top of the hill near Big Elk's grave," he said evasively as he looked through the spy-glass.
I could see the man with my naked eyes as he stood on the topmost point against the clear, blue sky.
"Take the spy-glass and look at him," continued Brush, as though to put off my question.
"Do you live on the other side of that hill?" I persisted.
"Frank, I live here, I don't live anywhere else. This is the only home I have," said the boy sadly. "Do your father and mother ask you who you play with at the Mission?"
"N-o, they never did, maybe they will sometime, I don't know."
"I think they will, that's why I'm going to tell you who I am, then they will know," said Brush, seriously. After a pause he went on, "My father and mother died when I was very small, but I remember my grandfather. He was a very old man. He used to go to your father's house; maybe you have seen him, but I guess you can't remember. He was one of the chiefs, Tae-son' was his name. Once we went to Omaha to buy a lot of things, and coming home we camped just this side of the town; there he died. He was the last relative I had. Now I have no mother, no father, no sister, nothing—no home." He uttered the last word slowly as though thinking. "That's why the Big Seven—that man's gone, you take the spy-glass and look for him."