“Aren’t you glad we came, Jibby?” urged Sin, ecstatically.
“Jibby … another of those names of yours, I suppose,” teased Ethan, gently.
“No, not my name at all,” she told him, holding her head the least bit higher. “My school name is Stella, because it is the Latin for Star. I was called Yellow Star before that, because it is the English of my own name.”
“I do think you could not pronounce it, but I will say it very slowly. Wee-chah´-pee-zee´-wee—like that. No, the second syllable is rough—in the throat—so!”
“Aspirate,” suggested Miss Morrison; and each in turn tried to pronounce the queer name, with varying success.
“I chose that name for myself when I was four years old,” Stella went on, quite seriously. “I was looking up through the teepee door at the bright yellow stars overhead. I did not like the name the old women gave me; it is a sad name; Ish-na´-nee-un´-lah—The-One-who-was-left-Alive!”
Everybody was listening eagerly, for the brave little exile seldom spoke of herself unless in answer to a direct question, and a curious sort of dignity that she had about her forbade too close questioning. Now it seemed that the unspoken comradeship of the hour had unloosed her tongue, and something, too, of the softness and quiet pathos of the late November afternoon had crept into her expressive voice.
She raised her eyes to the four sympathetic faces that were gazing straight into her own, and the color rose under her clear, dark skin as she asked:
“Shall I tell you how they came to give me that sad name?”
“Oh, do!” “Tell us, tell us!” chorused the girls; but Ethan sat a little apart, and seemed absorbed in whittling a stick that he had picked up under the great pine.
“You have all heard of the fight at Wounded Knee?” began Yellow Star. “Perhaps you know how they fought—troops in uniform with big guns, against women and children and men whose guns had been taken from them?” (They nodded gravely.) “Well, it was three days after the fight that a party went out from the agency, eighteen miles away, to bury the dead Indians. The agency doctor went with them, and it was he who found wrapped in blankets, in her dead mother’s arms, and lying partly covered with snow—for there had been a snow-storm on the day before—a little baby, alive and crying.