"But you ate hardly a mouthful of breakfast."
"I ate enough," returned Elk. "I'm not going to eat so much hereafter. We reservation Cheyennes overfeed with three meals a day. The braves grow fat and flabby. They cry like children when they're hurt." He colored shamedly, remembering how he had wept for the bear. He gave the can a shake. The snakes hissed, and his eye flashed sharply. "I'm through living the soft life of a white man," he added. "I'm a Cheyenne!"
In moving, the light sleeve of his calico shirt slipped up and revealed to Bluebird his arm covered with horrible gashes. Elk had been torturing himself to test his endurance, after the dreadful old tribal custom. Bluebird was convinced that he was acting under Lone Dog's advice. A dread of what her brother might be led to do next by the bad man formed like a layer of ice on her heart.
"Elk," she begged, tremulously, "please come home to dinner. I'm sure you've courage enough. I don't think it's weak for a brave to cry when he loses a thing he loves. If you'll eat something perhaps you'll feel differently."
Elk shook his head resolutely.
He did not return until evening. During the afternoon Bluebird's anxious eyes spied him riding along the trail skirting the Bad Lands, making for the town across the river beyond the fort. She felt certain that he had made the long circuit to avoid attention. She wondered why he was leading his second pony.
When Elk returned home he did not have the second pony. He had bartered it for an old rifle and some cartridges. He supposed the weapon was concealed beneath his blanket, but Bluebird, beading a moccasin beside the tepee door, observed it as he passed in. She said nothing about it, but the circumstances added to the weight of her anxiety over Elk's strange actions.
The next day was Wednesday. Elk had not relaxed his gloomy silence since the bear's death. He scarcely spoke to any one; he sulked off by himself.
Bluebird had an errand at the trader's this morning. She was crossing the prairie to the fort when, glancing over to the west where the hills lay, she saw Elk disappearing into the cañon beside Flat Butte. She looked after the lonely figure with a sigh.
She was kept waiting at the post trader's for quite a long time before the clerk could wait upon her. At length, while she was selecting her beads, Alan Jervis and an officer came sauntering down the long store past where she stood.