Storm laughed, for she had a dozen splendid and unworn dresses in her trunks of arrowproof hide.
"Rags!" she cried. "Rags! I've nothing fit to be seen, and you'll want a pack of moccasins for this trail. Besides, poor Rising Wolf needs a rest before he's fit to travel. And oh! how shall we ever manage with only two pack ponies and the colt? We'll have to load our saddle beasts and walk."
It was ten years now since Storm had entered the wilderness, and seven of these had been spent with his wife in the sweet vale below the Apse of Ice. Their home was very dear to both of them, filled as it was with happy memories. They pretended that they would like to see the world, take part in the stirring affairs of the Blackfoot nation, attend the ceremonies, the buffalo hunting, the gambling at the wheel game, the dancing, and the feasts. That was all make-believe. They perhaps of all mankind were the most widely traveled, for with the clarity of the dream-state they had seen the innermost life of imperial palaces and cities, traveled in regions unexplored, ascended mountains never scaled by climbers, walked the sea floor in groves of living coral, attended armies in battle, passed unharmed through burning forests, earthquake-shattered towns, devastating floods. To them the astral plane was familiar ground with its amazing vistas of past ages from the dawn of Time, its lands of glamour and fairy, its cities and settlements of the "dead" who live. They had been beyond the astral to regions infernal, purgatorial, and spiritual, attending worship at temples eternal in the Heavens where the priests are angels ministrant and the music celestial in chords of living light. "Seeing the world!" With such phrases they consoled one another concerning this journey to a Blackfoot camp with all its people drunk.
"The berries are nearly ripe," said Rain as they struck camp. "I wish we could stay to get our supply for the winter."
The men were loading a pony.
"My wife," Storm said to Rising Wolf, as they balanced the packs on the sling rope, "my woman is still a child—all make-believe, all let's-pretend." He laid the cooking gear between the panniers. "She is not grown up, and never will be."
"I don't follow," objected Rising Wolf. "Of course you'll want a winter store of berries."
They drew the manta, a bed robe, over the horse-load.
"Why, 'of course'?" asked Storm, as he passed the bight of the lash rope, and Rising Wolf hooked on.
"I wouldn't hint such things to my woman," said Rising Wolf reproachfully. "The hook's clear," he added.