“Do you think Black Dog was all a coward?” I asked at length. “Perhaps he only loved too much.”
“I do not know,” said Half-a-Day; “I only know sometimes I wish I had not looked upon his face.”
III
FEATHER FOR FEATHER
TUM-UM-UM, tum-um-um, went the drums beaten by the hands of the old men—too old for wars, but now grown momentarily youthful with the victory of the young men who were returning from battle.
Tum-um-um, tum-um-um! So sang the drums—great, glad buckskin drums, exultant beneath the staccato blows of the old men’s drumsticks. Tum-um-um, tum-um-um! Now the women, dressed in their gayest garments of dyed buckskin, radiant in beads, with the spirit of song upon their painted faces, came forth in a long file from a lodge and approached the centre of the open space about which were grouped the mud lodges of the village.
There, in the centre, sat the old men. The drums were singing a glad song, in sullen tones, in this hour of victory, for a runner, breathless with his speed, had brought the good news when the sun was halfway down the sky, and now the slowly setting sun was blazing on the evening hills.
Soon the whole victorious band, fresh from their fight with the Sioux, would come over the hills like an eager, dusty wind, clamorous with glad tongues and thunderous with the driven hoofs of captured ponies.