Me Smith

emphasis.
    “I’d buy the bunch if I was goin’ to set me some bear-traps.” Smith could see nothing to praise in anything which belonged to Ralston.
    Susie missed her mother immediately upon going into the house, and in their sleeping-room she saw every sign of a hurried departure.
    “Where’s mother gone?” she asked Ling.
    “Town.”
    “To town? To see a doctor about her arm?”
    “Beads.”
    “Beads?”
    “Blue beads, gleen beads. She no have enough beads for finish moccasin.”
    “When’s she comin’ home?”
    “She come ’night.”
    Forty miles over a rough road, with her bandaged arm, for beads! It did not sound reasonable to Susie, but since Smith was accounted for, and her mother would return that night, there seemed no cause for worry. Susie could not remember ever before having come home without finding her mother somewhere in the house, and now, as she fidgeted about, she realized how much she would miss her if that which she most feared should transpire to separate them.
    She walked to the door, and while she stood idly kicking her heel against the door-sill she saw Ralston, who was passing, stoop and pick up a scrap of paper which had been caught between two small stones. She observed that he examined it with interest, but while he stood with his lips pursed in a half-whistle a puff of wind flirted it from his fingers. He pursued it as though it had value, and Susie, who was not above curiosity, joined in the chase.
    It lodged in one of the giant sage-brushes which grew some little distance away on the outer edge of the dooryard, and into this brush Ralston reached and carefully drew it forth. He looked at it again, lest his eyes had deceived him, then he passed it to Susie, who stared blankly from the scrap of paper to him.
----
    XIX
WHEN THE CLOUDS PLAYED WOLF
    The Indian woman was restless; she had been so from the time they had lost sight of the town, but her restlessness had increased as the daylight faded and night fell.
    “You’re goin’ to bust this seat in if you don’t quit jammin’ around,” Meeteetse Ed warned her peevishly.
    Meeteetse was irritable, a state due largely to the waning exhilaration of a short and unsatisfactory spree.
    The woman clucked at the horses, and, to the great annoyance of her driver, reached for the reins and slapped them on the back.
    “They’re about played out,” he growled. “Forty miles is a awful trip for these buzzard-heads to make in a day. We orter have put up some’eres overnight.”
    “I could have stayed with Little Coyote’s woman.”
    “We orter have done it, too. Look at them cayuses stumblin’ along! Say, we won’t git in before ’leven or twelve at this gait, and I’m so hungry I don’t know where I’m goin’ to sleep to-night.”
    “Little Coyote’s woman gifted me some sa’vis berries.”
    “Aw, sa’vis berries! I can’t go sa’vis berries,” growled Meeteetse. “They’re too sweet. The only way they’re fit to eat is to dry ’em and pound ’em up with jerked elk—then they ain’t bad eatin’. I’ve et ’most ev’ry thing in my day. I’ve et wolf, and dog, and old mountain billy-goat, and bull-snakes, and grasshoppers, so you kin see I ain’t finnicky, but I can’t stummick sa’vis berries.” He asked querulously: “What’s ailin’ of you?”
    The Indian woman, who had been studying the black clouds as they drifted across the sky to dim the starlight, said in a half-whisper:
    “The clouds no look good to me. They look like enemies playin’ wolf. I feel as if somethin’ goin’ happen.”
    The bare suggestion of the supernatural was sufficient to alarm Meeteetse. He asked in a startled voice:
    “How do you feel?”
    “I feel sad. My heart drags down to de ground, and it seem like de dark hide somethin’.”
    Meeteetse elongated his neck and peered fearfully into the darkness.
    “What do you think it hides?” he asked in a husky whisper.
    She shook her head.
    “I don’t know, but I have de bad feelin’.”
    “I forgot to sleep with my feet crossed last night,” said Meeteetse, “and I dreamed horrible dreams all night long. Maybe they was warnin’s. I can’t think of anything much that could happen to us though,” he went on, having forgotten some of his ill-nature in his alarm for his personal safety. “These here horses ain’t goin’ to run away—I wisht they would, fer ’t would git us quite a piece on our road. We ain’t no enemies worth mentionin’, and we