“Gee, I know, you sure are right—there, Miss Lola,” Westy said sympathetically. “I’ve always thought it a darn shame to coop them up. They wouldn’t do any harm now, that’s a cinch!”
“I have often wondered myself,” Mr. Wilde put in, “wherein the fault did really lie in the beginning. It is true after all I suppose that the white man has been more or less of a thief, too. He took away their land at the start and then snatched from them the very birthright of every red man—his freedom. It is a fact to be deplored by the white man, really!”
Both Lola and her grandmother seemed to be looking back into the past, so grave were they in their meditation.
“Would you like to hear a long story, gentlemen?” Lola said inquiringly.
The very silence spoke consent.
In the realms of imagination they sat, waiting for Lola to begin. The moon broke full through the dark, star-flecked heavens as an elfin breeze stirred the sleeping flowers, wafting their heavy languorous perfume through the air. The cry of some distant night-prowler pierced the stillness and she looked away where the black shadows hid the deep ravine from view. With her face uplifted to the moonlight, her lips parted slowly:
“Many years ago——”
CHAPTER XII—JUST A FEW
“When the Moon of the Snow Shoes had come upon the prairies, the North Wind, cruel and merciless, blew its stinging fury in the faces of the red men. Ice and snow covered the earth, spreading itself like a huge blanket.
“Months passed and still no sunrise nor sunset could penetrate the frozen ground beneath its icy coverlet. The moon and stars each night looked down upon a silent, shivering world.