"Well," said he, "I'll go and tell the sheriff. He can hunt the parents up and settle the whole thing in a minute."
"But," she protested, "the Indians are gone to their tents—campoodies—out in the sage-brush long before this—that is, providing they are not lurking around this neighborhood. And just fancy a poor mother deprived of her child all night!"
"Well, what shall I do?"
"Suppose—suppose you take a lantern and go out to the wigwams. You are not afraid?"
"No, of course I'm not; but what's the use?"
In the end he found himself muffled, mittened, provided with the lantern, packing the child—all wrapped in a blanket and fastened loosely in with a shawl-strap—out in the sage-brush, floundering aimlessly about in search of the Indian campoodies. Mile after mile he trudged about in the night, shifting baby and lantern from hand to hand as his arms grew weary, and growing more and more disgusted as it dawned on his mind that all he knew of the way to find campoodies was to wander toward the west in the brush, he shouldered the sleeping warrior and made some lively tracks for home.
"There," said he, as he tossed the wee pappoose, blanket and all, on the lounge, "you can leave it to snooze where you please, for I am going right straight to bed."
His sister sat in a chair all night, dressed, and she waked a hundred times from a dream of hideous Indian depredations. She was wearily sleeping when her brother ate his breakfast and went. An hour later the head of an old and silently whistling Indian appeared at the open window.
