II
When Rain was well enough she made clothes for No-man, but would not as yet speak to him or go near him. Storm was the nurse. He did the hunting also, but his wife sun-dried the meat and dressed the skins. He fished, but she did the cooking; he dug wild vegetables which his wife prepared and stored. When the berry season came he thrashed the sarvis, cherry, and cranberry bushes, while Rain sifted, cured, and stored the fruit for winter. She had many a hard day's work besides to entertain the clients, who came hundreds of miles for healing or for counsel. They had to be fed, bedded down, and listened to for patient hours far into the night.
When there was time, the day's work finished and the gear repaired, if light enough remained of a summer evening, Storm read the Bible spelling it out laboriously and aloud in English, then translating phrase by phrase into his broken Blackfoot and the sign talk.
As rendered, it was something of this kind:
"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge."
Rain could see the camp of the Jews: herders watching their pony herd up on the prairie, and down in the meadow, miles wide and miles long, was the ring of the tribal tipis, in one immense ellipse. There the squaws were busy flenching skins, or sitting in a merry group to piece together the covering of a lodge. The little naked Jew boys chased and roped dogs or went on a make-believe buffalo hunt shooting with blunted arrows. The little girls were moving a doll's camp, or cooking a let's-pretend feast. Out in the open arena stood a row of society lodges for the Pharisee, Sadducee, and Scribe societies where they painted themselves and dressed for ceremonials. The Crazy Dogs, or camp police, were called the "Roman soldiers," much too stuck-up to mix with the other societies.
In the very middle was the medicine lodge, an enclosure of sheltering branches which sloped all inward towards the sacred lodge pole. Close by was the booth where the sacred woman fasted, and there was a shelter with a sweat lodge for the three high priests.
"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge, and found a lot of dog-faced persons who sold birds and trade goods for sacrifice to the Sun-Spirit."
"Shame! Shame!" cried Rain.
"So He threw them out, and pitched the trade goods after them."