“Poor old boy.” Sue sympathized with Prometheus, as she always did with a dumb animal. “I’d love to take you home with me.”
“I’d like to see your mother’s face when you appeared in Queen’s Ferry leading him,” laughed Ted gayly. “It would be worse than the tame crabs you caught at Lost Island last summer, Sue.”
“Oh, I don’t know, now. I think he’d make a very nice pet,” returned Sue reflectively.
“Let’s get Sue away from Prometheus right this minute, girls,” exclaimed Polly, “or he will surely go back home with us. Miss Murray, are there any real Indians around here nowadays?”
Jean slipped one arm around Polly’s waist, and they strolled up the narrow winding path that led to the buttes of sandstone back of the corral.
“We’ll go up to Council Rock, and there I can tell you about them,” she said. “And after that, we’ll have the first riding lesson.”
“Where’s Council Rock?” Ruth asked.
“It’s a great flat rock about half a mile up the trail, where the Indians used to meet under a flag of truce, and parley with the settlers, and hunters years ago. At one time, I believe it was the only neutral spot in this whole valley. That was long before Custer’s raid, back when they were trying to push the railroad through. Don’t you girls know anything at all about it?”
“Not a blessed thing,” the girls all chimed in.
“Then you must. For though our Wyoming is only one of the girl states as yet, she has been as great a heroine in her struggle for statehood and protection as any of the first colonies, I think. And if you are to love her and appreciate her, you must understand some of her history as well.”