"Have they made any medicine for her?" he asked presently, with a shade of suspicion in his voice.
It was an awkward question. Dusty Star wished to be quite truthful. At the same time, he did not want to confess what he had done. He had intended the thumping for medicine, though it was hardly the same thing as the grown-up people made, particularly as he had performed it without saying any medicine-words with it. It was his grandmother who had said the words, and they differed considerably from what the medicine-men used.
"No," he said at last. "They have not used any medicine." He could not find courage to add. "But I thumped."
After which nothing was said by either of them for a long time. And the maple leaves went on falling.
At length Dusty Star thought it was time that Lone Chief should begin to make preparations to start, if he intended to visit his grandmother. So he looked into the painted face and said.
"The shadows grow longer."
Lone Chief understood.
"Yes," he answered solemnly. "When the sun goes towards his lodge, it is what the shadows are accustomed to do."
It was not the words themselves which told Dusty Star what was going on in the medicine-man's mind, but that unspoken knowledge which flashes, none knows how, from one prairie-dweller to another along the invisible trail. In an instant he realized that Lone Chief did not intend to come. Slowly rising to his feet, he gazed straight into the medicine-man's face. Then with a clear, ringing tone, he spoke in a voice that was almost a cry.
"I am sent to bid you to come to my grandmother Sitting-Always, who is not happy with herself inside. If you do not come, the pain will drive her along the wolf-trail; but she does not wish to go."