We loaded our two pack horses with strings of braided ears, ten strings to a pony. The smaller ears we bore to the village in our baskets, to dry on our corn stage before threshing.
In midafternoon there were a few strings of corn still left, and I was laying them by for the next trip when I heard steps. I looked up and saw Red Hand coming, leading his pony.
Red Hand did not speak, but he laid my strings of corn on his pony and started for the village. “He wants to help me take home my corn,” I thought. A young man did thus for the girl he admired. “Red Hand is brave, and he owns a pony,” I said to myself; and I forgot all about Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing.
My father returned with the pack horses just as Red Hand was starting off; and I was stooping to fill my basket, when suddenly there came a sound, poh-poh-poh, as of guns; then yells, and a woman screamed. Small Ankle sprang for his war pony, which he had left hobbled near the husking pile.
Our corn fields lay in a strip of flat land skirted by low foot hills; and now I saw, coming over the hills, a party of Sioux, thirty or more, mounted, and painted for war. At the edge of the hills they checked their ponies, and those who had guns began firing down into our gardens. Many of the Sioux were armed with bows and arrows.
On all sides arose outcries. My brave father dashed by with his ringing war whoop, ui, ui, ui;[22] and after him Red Hand, lashing his pony and yelling like mad. Red Hand had thrown away my strings of corn, but I was not thinking of my corn just then.
[22] ṳ ï (pronounced like ōō ēē, but quickly and sharply)
Women and children began streaming past our field to the village. Brave young men rode between them and our enemies, lest the Sioux dash down and cut off some straggler. Two lads, on swift ponies, galloped ahead to rouse the villagers.
Meanwhile my father and others were fighting off the Sioux from the shelter of some clumps of small trees that dotted the flat: Our enemies did not fight standing, but galloped and pranced their horses about on the hillside to spoil our aim.
