As he sat in front of her he was aware that they were dwelling on him.  When he caught her glance, the eyes naively suggested that she had a communication to make to him, if she dared!

The fun had not yet commenced.  The two drummers sat idle in a corner, and all the company sat in stolid silence.  Only Watusk chatted and laughed.  The women stared at Ambrose, and the men looked down their noses.  All were somewhat embarrassed by the presence of a white man.  Ambrose, looking around, was struck by the incongruity of the women’s neat print dresses and the men’s store clothes taken with their savage, walled faces.  Such faces called for blankets, beads, war paint and eagles’ feathers.

Ambrose, seeing the entire tribe gathered here as it seemed, thought a little anxiously of the flour he had been at such pains to grind.

Mackenzie’s house was a good distance from the teepees, and the shack they were using for a store-house almost as far on the other side.

“Is anybody watching your flour?” he asked Watusk.

“I send four men to watch,” was the reply.

“Good men?  Men who will not sneak up to the dance?”

“Good men,” said Watusk calmly.

Watusk presently gave a signal to the stick-kettle men, and they commenced to drum with their knuckles.  The drums were wide wooden hoops with a skin drawn over one side.

The drummers had a lamp on the floor between them, and when the skin relaxed they dried it over the chimney.  Like dances everywhere this one was slow to get under way.  No one liked to be the first one to take the floor.

Gradually the drummers warmed to their work.  The stick-kettle had a voice of its own, a dull, throbbing complaint that caused even Ambrose’s blood to stir vaguely.

Finally a handsome young man arose and commenced to hitch around the stove with stiff joints, like a mechanical figure.  The company broke into a wild chant in a minor key, commencing on a high note and descending the whole gamut, with strange pauses, lifts and falls.

Half way down the women came in with a shrill second part.  It died away into a rumble, ever to be renewed on the same high, long-drawn note.  Ambrose was reminded of the baying of hounds.

The dancer knotted his handkerchief as he circled the stove.  Dancing up to another man, he offered him the end of it with some spoken words.

It was accepted, and they danced together around the stove, joined by the handkerchief.

The hunching, spasmodic step never varied.  Ambrose asked Watusk about it.

“This is the lame man’s dance,” his host explained.

“What lame man?” asked Ambrose.  “How did it begin?”

Watusk shrugged.  “It is very old,” he said.

The first man dropped out, and the second chose a new partner.  Sometimes there were two or three couples dancing at once.  Partners were chosen indiscriminately from either sex.