There was such a strange severity in his dark face that Billy did not argue the matter, but quietly obeyed, taking one loaf of bread, half the antelope, and three tins of the “fat fish.”

“Plenty prairie chicken here,” explained the Indian.  “I make good soup for Little Brave.”

“What a nice name to call me, Five Feathers!” smiled Jerry.

“Yes, you Little Brave,” replied the Indian.  “Little boy, but very big brave.”

At the last moment Jerry and his brother clasped hands.  “I hate to leave you, old man,” said Billy, a little unsteadily.

“Why, I’m not afraid,” answered the boy.  “You and father and I all know that I am with the best Indian in the Hudson’s Bay country—­we do know it, don’t we, Billy?”

“I’ll stake my life on that,” replied Billy, swinging into his saddle.  “Remember, Jerry, it’s only a hundred miles.  I’ll be there in two days, and the wagon will be here in another two.”

“Yes, I’ll remember,” replied the sick boy.

Then Billy struck rather abruptly up the half-obliterated buffalo trail.  Several times he turned in his saddle, looking back and waving his bandanna, and each time the Indian stood erect and lifted his open palm.  The receding horse and rider grew smaller, less, fainter, then they blurred into the horizon.  The sick boy closed his eyes, that ached from watching the fading figure.  He was utterly alone, with leagues of untracked prairie about him, alone with Five Feathers, a strange Indian, who sat silently nearby.

When Jerry awoke, the sun was almost setting, and Five Feathers was in precisely the same place and in precisely the same attitude.  Once, in his dreams, wherein he still wandered through fields of scarlet flowers, he watched a bud unfolding.  It opened with a sound like a revolver shot, or was it really a revolver?  The boy turned over on his side, for a savory odor greeted his nostrils, and he looked wonderingly around.  Five Feathers had evidently not been sitting there throughout that long June afternoon, for, within an arm’s length was the jolliest little tepee made of many branches of poplar and cottonwood, sides and roof all one thick mass of green leaves and branches woven together like basketwork, a bed of short, dry prairie grass, fragrant and brown, his own saddlebags and single blanket for pillow and mattress.  And on the fire the teapot, steaming with that delicious savory odor.

“What is it?” asked the boy, indicating the cooking.

“Prairie chicken,” smiled the Indian.  “I shoot while you sleep.”

So that was the bursting of the scarlet bud!

“Very good chicken,” continued the Indian.  “Very fat—­good for eat, good soup, both.”

So they made their supper off the tender stew, and soaked some hardtack in the soup.  It seemed to Jerry a royal meal, and he made up his mind that, when he arrived home, he would get his mother to stew a prairie hen in the teapot some day; it tasted so much better than anything he had ever eaten before.