RUNNING WOLF MOVES
Running Wolf was like his name. He was always on the move. Ever since Dusty Star could remember anything at all, his father had been going and coming, disappearing without warning, and re-appearing unexpectedly, as if the feet of many wolves went hunting in his blood.
It was in the Red Moon, the moon of the harvest, that he now made up his mind to pay a visit to his tribe, and see how the world wagged itself where great Chiefs and Medicine-men smoked the medicine-pipe together in the wonderful painted lodges very far south. But as the journey was a long one, and the cold weather would follow the geese, before he could return, he decided that the whole family should travel with him, and take up their winter quarters with the tribe.
Once Running Wolf had made up his mind, there was not a moment to lose. Almost before you could have believed it possible, Osikomix, the piebald pony, had the lodge-poles fastened to his back, and the entire family—Nikana, Dusty Star, Blue Wings and Kiopo—were on their way, following the direction the wild geese would take when they left the vast northern waters when the call came from the south.
Their way lay at first through the meadows of high bunch-grass that lay beside the stream, where the alders were tinged with faint purple, and all the willow thickets shone a fine clear red. Kiopo badly wanted to stop and hunt mice, but Dusty Star made him clearly understand that no loitering by the runways was possible now, and that he must keep in his place in the procession behind Osikomix and Running Wolf.
After a while they came to the country of the cottonwoods, where the trees were turning yellow, and where the sarvis berries were scarlet like flame. And they reached the borders of the great southern prairies where the low roll of the ridges seemed to have no end.
Dusty Star was very excited. He had never travelled so far on the prairies before, nor imagined that the world could be so tremendously big. And he knew that somewhere out in that always increasing bigness lay the great camp for which they were bound. He had never seen such a camp, but his mother had told him stories. He knew it was full of people—braves, squaws, papooses—very many papooses, like the baby-sister which Nikana was now carrying on her back. And there was feasting and dancing, and pony-racing, and being religious, though the last was not at all tiresome, being full of buffalo dances, and wolf songs, and generally ending in a sarvis-berry stew. What Nikana omitted to mention, were the huskies: so Dusty Star did not know that every Indian camp swarmed with huskies—dogs that were half-wolves, always hungry, always quarrelling, always ready for a fight; and—what was even more important—Kiopo did not know.
At sundown, Running Wolf made his camp. The spot he had chosen was at the foot of a low cliff, under which ran a river, which would have to be forded before they could proceed on their journey. Running Wolf attended to Osikomix. Dusty Star helped his mother to collect brushwood for a fire. Kiopo went hunting along the river bank to get an evening meal. Blue Wings was the only person who remained idle. Yet even she sucked her thumb with unceasing perseverance, and made soft glug-glugging noises in her little Indian throat.
That night when Dusty Star had lain down in his buffalo-robe bed, with Kiopo curled at his feet, he stayed awake a long time. He listened to the voices that seem born of the darkness—the hoot of the little grey owl from the swamp across the river, the evening call of coyotes among the prairie bluffs and those other small mysterious sounds that creep about the silence without paws or walking feet. And overhead was the night—the enormous Indian night, with all its glittering fires—stretched like a huge tepee from horizon to horizon, though the stars upon its sides were anything but dusty, and if the Great Spirit walked there, he was careful that his moccasins should not crush the tiny stars. And when at length Dusty Star fell asleep, he dreamed of a great hunting across the windy places of the sky, where the buffaloes clashed their horns against the cliffs of Heaven, and the wolf-pack woke the echoes in the hollows of the moon.
The fording of the river next morning was a great delight. Dusty Star rode on his father's back, and Blue Wings went on her mother's. Osikomix, splashed grandly across, taking the water up to his belly. But when the party had reached the opposite shore, Dusty Star found that Kiopo was left behind. There he stood looking anxiously at the water, and enquiringly at his owners, as if asking which of them was coming back to fetch him. But as it was soon made plain to him that no one intended to do so, and that the party was preparing to continue on its way, he put his courage into all his paws and plunged into the stream. It was the very first time he had taken to the water, but his instinct taught him what to do, and he swam bravely across, dragging himself up the opposite bank, a little half-drowned caricature of a wolf, panting with excitement and pride.