Now it happened that Tah-You’s camp stood in the bend of the deep little river, and the tepees were based in sweet-smelling grasses, and when the sick boy opened his eyes after his swoon, he caught the flicker of leaf shadows on the yellowed conical walls of his mother’s lodge, and heard the mocking-bird’s song in the oaks. The kind, wrinkled face of his grandfather, the medicine man, bent over him, and the loving hands of his mother were on his neck. He was at home again! His heart gave a throb of joy, and then his eyes closed, a sweet langour crept over him, an utter content, and he fell asleep with the humming song of Tah-You carrying him ever farther from the world of the white man’s worry and unrest.
The following day, as Williams lifted the door-flap and entered, Tah-You sat contentedly smoking. The mother, who was sewing on a moccasin, looked up with a happy smile on her face and said, “He is almost well, my son.”
“I am glad,” said Williams.
Tah-You blew a whiff from his pipe and said, with a spark of deep-seated humor in his glance:
“The white men are very clever, but there are some things which they do not know. You—you are half red man; that accounts for your good heart. You see my medicine is very strong.”
Williams laughed and turned toward the boy who lay looking out at the dear world with big, unwavering eyes. “Robert, how are you?”
Slowly the boys lips shaped the whispered word, “Better.”
“There is no place like home and mother when you’re sick, Robert. Hurry up and get well. I need you.”
As Williams was going, the mother rose and took his hand and cried out, poignantly: “You are good. You let me have my son. You have saved him from the cruel-hearted medicine woman. Do not let her make evil medicine upon us.”
“I will not let any one hurt him. Be at peace.”