I grew bitter, and censured the woman for cruel neglect of our physical ills.  I despised the pencils that moved automatically, and the one teaspoon which dealt out, from a large bottle, healing to a row of variously ailing Indian children.  I blamed the hard-working, well-meaning, ignorant woman who was inculcating in our hearts her superstitious ideas.  Though I was sullen in all my little troubles, as soon as I felt better I was ready again to smile upon the cruel woman.  Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial.

The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by.  These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days.  Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record.  But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it.

VI.

Four strange summers.

After my first three years of school, I roamed again in the Western country through four strange summers.

During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice of human aid.  My brother, being almost ten years my senior, did not quite understand my feelings.  My mother had never gone inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write.  Even nature seemed to have no place for me.  I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one.  This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East, and the unsatisfactory “teenth” in a girl’s years.

It was under these trying conditions that, one bright afternoon, as I sat restless and unhappy in my mother’s cabin, I caught the sound of the spirited step of my brother’s pony on the road which passed by our dwelling.  Soon I heard the wheels of a light buckboard, and Dawee’s familiar “Ho!” to his pony.  He alighted upon the bare ground in front of our house.  Tying his pony to one of the projecting corner logs of the low-roofed cottage, he stepped upon the wooden doorstep.

I met him there with a hurried greeting, and, as I passed by, he looked a quiet “What?” into my eyes.

When he began talking with my mother, I slipped the rope from the pony’s bridle.  Seizing the reins and bracing my feet against the dashboard, I wheeled around in an instant.  The pony was ever ready to try his speed.  Looking backward, I saw Dawee waving his hand to me.  I turned with the curve in the road and disappeared.  I followed the winding road which crawled upward between the bases of little hillocks.  Deep water-worn ditches ran parallel on either side.  A strong wind blew against my cheeks and fluttered my sleeves.  The pony reached the top of the highest hill, and began an even race on the level lands.  There was nothing moving within that great circular horizon of the Dakota prairies save the tall grasses, over which the wind blew and rolled off in long, shadowy waves.