The Indian spoke something in his own language and pointed to his foot.
"It's swelled," said Bill. "Reckon you must have cut it on a stone. Well, you sit down in the shade, and when Hank Nelson comes in I'll have him look at it. Hank's a sort of doctor among the cowboys," Bill explained to Laddie and Russ.
While the Indian was resting in the shade, Laddie and Russ ran to tell their mother and the other little Bunkers about him.
"Is he a real, wild Indian?" asked Rose.
"He's real, but he isn't wild," Russ answered. "I like him. He likes children, too, 'cause he's always talking about a papoose. Papoose is Indian for baby," he told his sister.
The other little Bunkers gathered around Red Feather, as he sat outside the cook-house, and he smiled at the children. He seemed to want to tell them something as he looked eagerly at them, but all he could make them, or the men at the ranch, understand, was that he wanted to see a "papoose" who was larger than Russ.
"Maybe he wants a boy to go along with him and help him 'cause he's lame," suggested Laddie.
"No, it isn't that," said Uncle Fred, who, with Daddy Bunker, had come back from the spring. "He's worrying about something, but I can't make out what it is. Maybe some of the other cowboys can talk his language. We'll wait until they come in."
Hank Nelson, the cowboy who "doctored" the others, came riding in, and he agreed to look at the Indian's lame foot. Hank said it was badly cut, and he put some salve and a clean bandage on it, for which Red Feather seemed very grateful.
"No can walk good," he said, when his foot was wrapped up. "I go sleep out there!" and he pointed to the tall grass of the plain.