Quickly the feast was prepared and the boy ate apart—his foster-mother bringing him food—but he could hear the story of the day’s hunting and the allusions to the prowess of Crooked Lightning’s son, Black Wolf, who was Erskine’s age, and he knew they were but slurs against himself. When the dance began his mother pointed toward it, meaning that he should take part, but he shook his head—and his thoughts went backward to his friends at the fort and on back to the big house on the James, to Harry and Hugh—and Barbara; and he wondered what they would think if they could see him there; could see the gluttonous feast and those naked savages stamping around the fire with barbaric grunts and cries to the thumping of a drum. Where did he belong?
Fresh wood was thrown on the fire, and as its light leaped upward the lad saw an aged Indian emerge from one of two tents that sat apart on a little rise—saw him lift both hands toward the stars for a moment and then return within.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“The new prophet,” said his mother. “He has been but one moon here and has much power over our young men.”
An armful of pine fagots was tossed on the blaze, and in a whiter leap of light he saw the face of a woman at the other tent—saw her face and for a moment met her eyes before she shrank back—and neither face nor eyes belonged to an Indian. Startled, he caught his mother by the wrist and all but cried out:
“And that?” The old woman hesitated and scowled:
“A paleface. Kahtoo bought her and adopted her but”—the old woman gave a little guttural cluck of triumph—“she dies to-morrow. Kahtoo will burn her.”
“Burn her?” burst out the boy.
“The palefaces have killed many of Kahtoo’s kin!”
A little later when he was passing near the white woman’s tent a girl sat in front of it pounding corn in a mortar. She looked up at him and, staring, smiled. She had the skin of the half-breed, and he stopped, startled by that fact and her beauty—and went quickly on. At old Kahtoo’s lodge he could not help turning to look at her again, and this time she rose quickly and slipped within the tent. He turned to find his foster-mother watching him.