When they reached camp and threw down their burdens under the shade of a large arbor of boughs, where an old woman with gray witch-locks flying loose and a skin like dark-brown parchment looked up from her eternal moccasin-mending, and a long-haired dog not much bigger than a rat flew to greet them with all but articulate cries of joy—then, indeed, they were at home!
“Sh-h-h-Sheka!” Blue Earth was tired and hungry, and drove off the dog with a rush of angry sibilants.
“Here, Sheka, Sheka! Poor little thing,” coaxed Yellow Star, pitifully.
“How many did you get?” demanded Grandmother, reaching greedily for the sack. “The Blue-Coat has been here with a paper; I think it is from the Little Father. I gave him coffee and bread, and he told me all the news. Here is the paper,” and she drew it from her wide sleeve and held it toward the girl.
Yellow Star took the agent’s letter and glanced it over as she stood, while the others, Chaskay and Sheka included, gazed steadily into her thoughtful face with frank curiosity.
“It is only to say that the sewing-machines will not be here until next month. I sha’n’t wait for them; the women are coming to-morrow, and there’s plenty of hand sewing for the present,” and she entered the little house with quite a different air from that of the plum thicket.
Certainly the Indian agent, at his first interview some weeks earlier, had not to complain of any lack of dignity in the young field matron.
“You understand that suitable quarters will be provided for you, Miss—ah!—Miss Waring,” he had drawled, keeping his heavy-lidded eyes upon her face with a persistency that was not altogether pleasant.
(“First Indian girl I ever Miss’d,” he acknowledged later to his grinning cronies in the office, “and it came sort of hard. Nothing else for it, though. She’s considerable of a lady, _she_ is!”
“Considerable to look at, too, I sh’d say,” Jack Pepper mumbled under his breath.)
“I expect to stay with my friend, Young Eagle’s wife, in her house on Cherry Creek,” Stella had replied, simply. “Her grandmother will live with us.”
“Hum-ha … Miss—ah!—Waring, if you have quite made up your mind to that, we shall have to make some improvements on the house. It’s an ordinary log cabin, isn’t it, Mr. Pepper? … one room? … Two? That’s good. Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We will build a frame addition 16 by 20 feet, for the field matron’s private apartment, with three windows and a good floor; lay floors in the other two rooms and put on a good, shingled roof. With these additions, I think you ought to be fairly comfortable.”