Fes. 17, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
‘Eos 


“She is a Snake woman,” said Weasel Tail. 
“By the cut and pattern of her moccasins I know 
that she is one of that tribe.” 
Who was he, I wonder, of what tribe and time, 
who conceived the idea of the sign language, by 
means of Which all the tribes of the plains from 
the Saskatchewan to Mexico are able to converse 
with each other and tell all that their tongues 
may not utter. Here were we, unable to under- 
stand ene word of this woman’s language, yet by 
means of this wonderfui invention of some an- 
cient one, language mattered not. 
“Who are you?’ Weasel Tail asked, “and 
whence come you?” 
“I am a Snake,’ the woman signed, “and I 
come from the camp of my people far to the 
south.” She paused, and we signified that we 
understood. For a moment or two she sat think- 
ing, brow wrinkled, lips pursed, and then con- 
tinued : , 
“Three winters ago I became Two Bears’ 
man. .He was very handsome, very brave, kind- 
hearted. I loved him, he loved me, we were 
happy.” Again she paused, and tears rolled 
down her cheeks. She brushed them away re- 
peatedly,’ and with much effort resumed her 
story: “We were very happy for he never got 
angry; no one ever heard cross words in our 
lodge. It was a Icdge of feasts, and song, and 
laughter. Daily we prayed to the Sun, asking 
him to continue our happiness, to let us live long. 
“Tt was three moons ago, two before this one 
which is almost ended. Winter had gone, the 
grass and leaves were coming out. I awoke one 
mornine and found that I was alone in the lodge. 
My chief had arisen while I slept and gone out; 
he had taken his gun, his saddle and rope, so I 
knew that he had started on a hunt. I was glad. 
‘He will bring home meat,’ I said, ‘fat meat of 
some kind, and we will give a feast.’ I gathered 
wood, I got water, and then I sat’ down to await 
his return. All day I sat in the lodge waiting 
for him, sewing moccasins, listening for the foot- 
falls of his hunting horse. The sun went down, 
and I built a good fire, ‘He will come soon now,’ 
I said. 
“But no, he didn’t come, and I began to feel 
uneasy. Far into the night I sat waiting, and 
fear pressed harder and harder on my _ heart. 
Soon the people of the village went to bed. I 
arose and went to my father’s lodge, but I did 
not sleep. 
“When morning came the men rode eut to look 
for my chief; all day they hunted through the 
little prairies, through the forests, along the 
river, but they did not find him, nor any signs 
of him, nor of his horse. For three days they 
rode the country in all directions, and then gave 
up. ‘He is dead,’ they said, ‘he has drowned, or 
a bear or some enemy has killed him. It must 
have been an enemy, else his horse would have 
returned to its mates.’ 
“My own thought was that he lived; I could 
not believe him dead. My mother told me to cut 
off my hair, but I would not do it. I said to her: 
‘He is alive. When he returns should he find my 
long hair gone he will be angry, for he loves it. 
Many a time he has himself combed and braided 
ite 
“The days passed and I waited, waited and 
watched for him to come. I began to think that 
he might be dead, and then one night my dream 
gave me hope. The next night and the next it 
was the same, and then on the fourth night, when 
my dream again came and told me I knew that 
wo- 
it was true, that he lived. ‘Far away to the 
north,’ said my dream, ‘on a river of the plains, 
your chief lies wounded and ill in a camp of the 
prairie people. Go find him, and help him to get 
well. He is sad and lonely, he cries for you.’ 
“So I got ready and, Gne evening after all 
were asleep, I started; it was the only way. Had 
they known what I was about to do, my father 
and mother would have stopped me.. I carried 
some food, my awl and sinews, plenty of moc- 
casin leather. When my food was gone I snared 
squirrels, rabbits, dug roots, so | was never hun- 
gry. But the way was long, very, very long, and 
I feared the bears prowling and snuffing around 
in the night. They did not harm me; my dream 
person must have kept them from doing me 
wrong. The camp, my dream said, was in sight 
of the mountains. After many days I came to 
the Big River, and for many more days I fol- 
lowed it down, until I came in sight of the white 
men’s houses, but I found no camp of those I 
sought. I turned north, and coming to the next 
stream, followed it up to the mountains; still I 
found no people. Then I went north again until 
I came to this little creek and now I meet you. 
chief in your camp?” 
TReliimes 1s my 

Crazy, say you? Well, that depends upon the 
point of view. Some there are who believe in 
“a prophet’s paradise to come.” Some, for in- 
stance, have faith in the revelations said to have 
been made to a certain Joseph Smith; some be- 
lieve in Allah; others in Christian Science; still 
others in divers creeds and faiths. If they are 
crazy then indeed was this Indian woman also, 
for she had faith in a dream, doubted not for 
one instant that by following its instructions she 
would find her loved, lost man. Dreams, to 
most Indians, are a reality. They believe that 
they really do commune with spirits in their 
sleep, that their shadows—souls—temporarily re- 
leased from the body, then travel far and meet 
with strange adventures. If a Blackfoot, for in- 
stance, dreams of seeing green grass he is abso- 
lutely certain that he will live to see another sea- 
son of spring. 
We were, of course, obliged to tell the wan- 
derer that her lost one was not in our camp. 
Weasel Tail also informed her that some North 
Blackfeet and some Bloods were visiting us, and 
advised her to accompany us and question them. 
She readily consented to that, and we started 
homeward. My friend was riding a vicious little 
mare which would not carry double, so I was 
obliged to take the woman up behind me, and 
we created a big sensation when we rode into 
camp about sundown. Weasel Tail had agreed 
to give her a place in his lodge, and I had hoped 
to drop her near it unobserved by the mistress 
of a ceriain home a little farther along. But no 
I espied Nat-ah’-ki from afar stand- 
at the handsome young 
woman perched behind me, her arms_ tightly 
clasped about my waist. But when I rode up 
tc my own lodge there was no one to greet me, 
and for the first time I was permitted to unsaddle 
my animal. I went inside and sat down. Nat- 
ah’-ki was roasting some meat and neither spoke 
nor looked up. Still in silence she brought me 
water, soap, a towel and comb. After I had 
washed she set before me a bowl of soup, some 
meat and then what a sad, reproachful look she 
gave me. I grinned foolishly, vacuously, and, 
although [ had been guilty of no wrong, some- 
how I could net return her gaze and quickly 
such luck. 
ing and gazing at us, 
busied myself with my food. The litthe woman 
fled to the other side of the lodge, covered her 
head with her shawl, and began to cry. Some- 
how, although I had thought I was hungry, my 
food did not taste good. I nervously ate a little 
oi it and then went out and over to Weasel 
Tail’s. 
“Send your mother over to my lodge,” 
“and have her tell Nat-ah’-ki all about it.” 
“Ah hal’ he laughed, “the young ones have 
quarreled, have they? The little one is jealous? 
sata. 
Well, we'll soon fix it out,’ and he bade his 
mother go over. 
An hour or two later, when I went home, 
Nat-ah’-ki was all smiles and welcomed me joy- 
ously, insisted that I should have another sup- 
per, and gave me a pair of gorgeous moccasins 
which she had been surreptitiously making for 
my adornment. 
“Oh, that poor Snake woman,” she said, just 
before we fell asleep, ‘how I pity her. To-mor- 
row I shall make her a present of a horse.” 
WALTER B. ANDERSON. 
[TO BE CONTINUED. | 

The Passing of a Sultan. 
BETWEEN camps ten and eleven the trail from 
Malabang to Camp Vicars runs through the for- 
est and is as crooked as the proverbial streets of 
Boston, which, as all the world knows, turn and 
twist so that a stranger who once started from 
his hotel to go to the railroad station met him- 
self coming back. 
Along this trail one morning in July, two or 
three years ago, a party of recruits was plod- 
ding on its way from Malabang to replenish the 
ranks of the companies at “the lake, ” which three 
solid months of fighting and exposure had sadly 
depleted. 
To one who has never before met with the 
experience it is difficult to realize when you are 
dumped on the beach of Moro land that the 
safety of civilization has been left behind and 
you are now ina country where a different order 
of things prevails and “it’s up to you” to keep 
eyes and ears open, and to allow no man whose 
color is different from your own, to come within 
striking distance unless your rifle or revolver 
is ready to hand. 
So it was with these recruits who, fresh from 
their New England farms and the ‘security of 
the great white transport on which they had 
spent such a restful six weeks, had no realization 
of the fact that they were in a land where death 
in many forms stalks along the trails and lies 
hidden in the sunlit depths of the forest. 
And they were little to be blamed, for surely 
a more peaceful scene would be difficult to im- 
agine than that which unfolded itself as they 
tramped leisurely along the dusty road on this 
morning of which I write. The sun shone as 
brightly ; the birds sang as sweetly, and the faint 
breeze stirring the foliage was as cool and re- 
freshing as in the far off western land from 
which they came. No thought of danger entered 
their heads, and what was there in the calm 
silence of the forest to awaken it? 
To be sure, at Malabang, while waiting to be 
sent to the front, their ears had been filled with 
tales of sudden attacks by and the treachery of 
the natives. But they hadn’t paid much atten- 
tion to them or taken them at all seriously, for 
they knew the delicht an old soldier has in get- 
ting a raise out of a rookey, and classed these 
tales with the advice they from time to time re- 
ceived to go to the top sergeant and get their 
butter checks, or to do something else quite as 
absurd: which, when followed, invariably led to 
much hilarity at their expense on the part of 
their (tor)mentors. 
Of course they had seen one or two men about 
camp with their arms in slings or their heads 
swathed in bandages who, said the old soldiers, 
“had been jumped along the trail and swiped with 
a bolo.” “But that all happened weeks ago. be- 
fore these road camps were established,” said the 
