RED ROBE’S DREAM

Long, long ago, Red Robe and Talking Rock were young men in the Blackfeet camp.  In their childhood days and early youth their life had been hard.  Talking Rock was an orphan without a single relation and Red Robe had only his old grandmother.

This old woman, by hard work and sacrifice, had managed to rear the boys.  She tanned robes for the hunters, made them moccasins worked with porcupine quills, and did everything she could to get a little food or worn out robes and hide, from which she made clothes for her boys.  They never had new, brightly painted calf robes, like other children.  They went barefoot in summer, and in winter their toes often showed through the worn out skin of their moccasins.  They had no flesh.  Their ribs could be counted beneath the skin; their cheeks were hollow; they looked always hungry.

When they grew to be twelve or fifteen years old they began to do better, for now they could do more and more for themselves.  They herded horses and performed small services for the wealthy men; then, too, they hunted and killed a little meat.  Now, for their work, three or four dogs were given them, so with the two the old woman owned, they were able to pack their small lodge and other possessions when the camp moved, instead of carrying everything on their backs.

Now they began to do their best to make life easier for the good old woman who had worked so hard to keep them from starving and freezing.

Time passed.  The boys grew old enough to go out and fast.  They had their dreams.  Each found his secret helper of mysterious power, and each became a warrior.  Still they were very poor, compared with other young men of their age.  They had bows, but only a few arrows.  They were not able to pay some great medicine man to make shields for them.  As yet they went to war only as servants.

About this time Red Robe fell in love.

In the camp was a beautiful girl named M[=a]-m[)i]n’—­the Wing—­whom all the young men wished to marry, but perhaps Red Robe loved her more than all the rest.  Her father was a rich old medicine man who never invited any except chiefs and great warriors to feast with him, and Red Robe seldom entered his lodge.  He used to dress as well as he could, to braid his hair carefully, to paint his face nicely, and to stand for a long time near the lodge looking entreatingly at her as she came and went about her work, or fleshed a robe under the shelter of some travois over which a hide was spread.  Then whenever they met, he thought the look she gave him in passing was friendly—­perhaps more than that.