There was a note of resignation in the old chief’s answer quite beyond what the words themselves convey. Men said that Thunder Bird remembered the Forty-Niners and the Donner party. It might have been even as they said, for there was a look in the chief’s eyes as old as the beginning of time.
Johnny spread his blanket and beckoned to the aged Indian to be seated. This formality accomplished, the boy opened a tin of tobacco and poured its contents on to the blanket. With his fingers he divided it. Not in equal portions. Oh, no! As he originally poured the piles they were approximately even, but without glancing up the boy kept on transferring small pinches of the tobacco from his own to the chief’s portion until Thunder Bird’s share was four times Johnny’s.
Then he produced cigarette papers, and from his share rolled cigarettes for the old man. To attempt to describe the expression on Thunder Bird’s face as he watched Johnny would be wasted effort. The chief’s hair was white, his face gaunt, shriveled; his jaws toothless; if such a combination can mirror the innocence of childhood it was achieved in the old Piute.
In back of him, at a respectable distance, Thunder Bird’s squaw sat, expressionless, watching the dumb show.
“Hé,” the old man grunted at last. “Mebbe you come look for mine this time.”
“No look for mine, Thunder Bird. Look for stranger—white man. You see him on Reservation last two moons?”
The Indian did not answer for several minutes. Then:
“No see um stranger.”
“Rode a stallion, big horse—a roan,” Johnny persisted.
“Spanish horse, eh?”