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Updated: June 12, 2025
Nevertheless the three insisted, and old Inmutanka observed wisely that the skin should go only in the lodge of the head chief. At last Xingudan accepted, and Will, although he had not made the offer for that purpose, had a friend for life. The band began to cut up the vast body, which, when the flesh was well pounded and softened by the squaws, would alone feed the village for quite a period.
Inmutanka himself would say nothing about them, but Will made a shrewd surmise that the runner had come for help in the great war and that the last and uttermost village would be stripped in the attempt to turn back the white tide. His growing appreciation of wild life caused him to have an increasing feeling of sympathy for the Sioux. The white flood would engulf them some day.
Then occurred the terrible invasion of the mountain wolves, the like of which the oldest man could not recall. Will and Inmutanka were awakened at dawn by a distant but ferocious whining. "Wolves," said Inmutanka, "and they are hungry, but they will not attack a village."
The wise old Xingudan, backed by the equally wise old Inmutanka, forbade any expeditions far from the village unless they were made in great force, and their judgment was soon proved by the fact that many bears, wolves and mountain lions of the greatest size were slain.
After supper Inmutanka replaced with a fresh one the bandage upon his head, from which the pain had now departed. Will was really grateful. "I want to tell you, Dr. Inmutanka," he said, "that there are worse physicians than you, where I come from." The old Sioux understood his tone and smiled. Then all the Indians, most of them reclining on the earth, relapsed into silence.
He still lived in the lodge of Inmutanka, who was invariably kind and helpful, and Will soon had a genuine liking for the good old doctor. It pleased him to wait upon Inmutanka as if he were a son. It was, on the whole, well for the lad that he was compelled to work, because after the day's labors were over and he had eaten his supper, he fell asleep from exhaustion, and slept without dreams.
Will and the Crane, otherwise Pehansan, formed a warm friendship, and he found a similar friend in Roka, the stalwart warrior who had come with the order for his death by torture. Soon after he received the gift of the great bow the three decided on a hunting expedition toward the upper end of the valley, all traveling on snowshoes. "Beware of the wild beasts, my son," said Inmutanka.
He became stoical, he pretended to an indifference which often he did not feel, and he never spoke of the friends who had disappeared so suddenly from his life, even to old Inmutanka. The "doctor," as Will called him, was improving his English by practice, and Will in return was learning Sioux fast both from Inmutanka and from the people in the village. He knew the names of many animals.
Young, but his arrow sings true, his lance strikes deep, Waditaka, the thoughtful, the bold, the son of Inmutanka, Proud we are that he belongs to us and fights for us. Young Clarke lay back between the buffalo covers. The song, crude though it was, and without rhyme or metre in the Indian fashion, gave him a strange and deep thrill.
Will did not appreciate the full significance of his words then, because Inmutanka was showing the way to one of the smaller tepees and he entered it, finding it clean and commodious.
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