"The deuce." It wrenched my heart to think what might have been—my child, my happiness.
"Growls-like-a-Bear. Says 'Woof! Woof!' because I love my son!"
"Oh, I don't care," said I in a jealous rage. "It's nothing to me. Once we were sister and brother, you and I, innocent children playing in camp, and on the trail, playing at being grown up. You never were my woman."
Then all about me in the gloaming, I heard a ripple of laughter, and one by one there rose up out of the dusk gaunt Indians, trying not to laugh lest they should seem ill-mannered. One grand old chief lifted his head, palm forward, to the stars, making the peace sign. "My son," he said, "I ask you to shake hands, after the way of your people."
"How!" came the greetings all around me. "How, Shermogonish! Greeting, soldier! We all want to shake hands."
"My son," said the head chief, "you are a Stone-heart. We believe that your tribe are like ghosts, because you have no hearts, and do not really live. Because you have no heart, our daughter, Rain, is innocent."
My memory flashed back to that world I had left behind me ever so many weeks ago, to happy parishes in Mayfair and St. James's, where men were simple and unpretentious, frank and kind. So I saluted Medicine Robe as one would address a minister of state, expecting a blessing from Mad Wolf as though he were a cardinal, and felt that Flat Tail was a retired general who had led an army in battle not so long ago. Then there was Many Horses, my blood brother. I was so glad to see them!
"My son," said the head chief, throwing his robe wide open, disclosing the bow in his hand, the arrows at his belt. "I came to kill you. It is well I waited. You will eat in my lodge?"
I said I was hungry enough to eat the lodge.
So they escorted me, walking in single file, with feet straight to the front, as softly shod people do, lest they should bruise their toes against the trail edge. When we came to the lodge, the head chief took his seat with his guest and the men on his left, his wife and all the women on the right. We had an Absaroka sausage, full of interest and excitement as a haggis, Chicago bully beef, and a dish of berries, with graceful acts of tribute to the gods, and the decorous ceremony of the pipe to follow. Then Medicine Robe, as host, spoke with a tender irony of the white men, but said that some were straight even as Rising Wolf, his oldest friend. For Charging Buffalo had given courtesy to Rain, his daughter, and lately delivered Many Horses from prison.