“Why, mother, I want to taste the plums!” I exclaimed, as I dropped my hand to my side in disappointment.

“Never pluck a single plum from this brush, my child, for its roots are wrapped around an Indian’s skeleton.  A brave is buried here.  While he lived he was so fond of playing the game of striped plum seeds that, at his death, his set of plum seeds were buried in his hands.  From them sprang up this little bush.”

Eyeing the forbidden fruit, I trod lightly on the sacred ground, and dared to speak only in whispers until we had gone many paces from it.  After that time I halted in my ramblings whenever I came in sight of the plum bush.  I grew sober with awe, and was alert to hear a long-drawn-out whistle rise from the roots of it.  Though I had never heard with my own ears this strange whistle of departed spirits, yet I had listened so frequently to hear the old folks describe it that I knew I should recognize it at once.

The lasting impression of that day, as I recall it now, is what my mother told me about the dead man’s plum bush.

VI.

The ground squirrel.

In the busy autumn days my cousin Warca-Ziwin’s mother came to our wigwam to help my mother preserve foods for our winter use.  I was very fond of my aunt, because she was not so quiet as my mother.  Though she was older, she was more jovial and less reserved.  She was slender and remarkably erect.  While my mother’s hair was heavy and black, my aunt had unusually thin locks.

Ever since I knew her she wore a string of large blue beads around her neck,—­beads that were precious because my uncle had given them to her when she was a younger woman.  She had a peculiar swing in her gait, caused by a long stride rarely natural to so slight a figure.  It was during my aunt’s visit with us that my mother forgot her accustomed quietness, often laughing heartily at some of my aunt’s witty remarks.

I loved my aunt threefold:  for her hearty laughter, for the cheerfulness she caused my mother, and most of all for the times she dried my tears and held me in her lap, when my mother had reproved me.

Early in the cool mornings, just as the yellow rim of the sun rose above the hills, we were up and eating our breakfast.  We awoke so early that we saw the sacred hour when a misty smoke hung over a pit surrounded by an impassable sinking mire.  This strange smoke appeared every morning, both winter and summer; but most visibly in midwinter it rose immediately above the marshy spot.  By the time the full face of the sun appeared above the eastern horizon, the smoke vanished.  Even very old men, who had known this country the longest, said that the smoke from this pit had never failed a single day to rise heavenward.

As I frolicked about our dwelling I used to stop suddenly, and with a fearful awe watch the smoking of the unknown fires.  While the vapor was visible I was afraid to go very far from our wigwam unless I went with my mother.