“From Jim Reed?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“No good. Jim Reed bad. You lose just same. Come and eat.”
Big Medicine squinted at her for several moments before getting to his feet. He was so tall that he had to stoop under the hanging lamp.
“Lucy,” he said, “there are times when I thank the good God that I have you instead of a white woman. You never complain, never nag; trust me implicitly, believe in your dumb way that what I do is best. By the gods, there are times when I thoroughly appreciate you, Lucy.”
“Sometime—not so much,” she said slowly.
Big Medicine reached up and turned down the big lamp, before following her out into the hall and down to the dining-room, which was a kitchen and dining-room combined.
A girl was standing at the stove, baking hot cakes, while Ike Marsh, Musical Matthews, and Cleve Davis, the singing cowpuncher, sat at the table, eating.
Big Medicine sat down at the head of the table, still wearing his blanket, and the girl came to him, carrying a platter heaped with steaming cakes. She was unmistakably a half-breed girl, but almost as white as Big Medicine; a tall, lithe, big-eyed girl, of about eighteen, with a long braid of raven hair thrown carelessly across one shoulder.
She was the daughter of Big Medicine and Lucy; half-English, half Nez Percé. Big Medicine had brought his squaw from the Northwest, and they had named the girl Kwann, which, in the trade language of the Northwest, means Glad. But she was known to everyone of Hawk Hole as Wanna.