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Updated: June 12, 2025
Warriors also passed and uttered contemptuous words in an unknown language. But Will, clinging to his resolution, pretended to take no notice. Long before the day was over every bone in him was aching and his hands were bleeding, but he made no complaint. When he returned to the tepee Inmutanka put a lotion on his hands. "It good for you, but must not tell," he said.
"You've been a bachelor too long, and you a great medical man too. Men are scarce in this village, and you must have at least a dozen wives." "You stop, I stop," said Inmutanka in a tone of entreaty. "Very good, honored foster-father. It's a closed subject forever. I don't think I'd care to have a dozen stepmothers just now." The cold remained intense.
Water was then poured on these, until a dense steam arose. When Inmutanka thought that Will had stood it as long as he could, he withdrew him from the hot steam bath, although medicine men sometimes left their patients in too long, allowing them to be scalded to death. In Will's case it was cure, not kill.
The "almost" was soon turned to a fact, as old Inmutanka formally adopted Will as his son with the ceremonies customary on such occasions, and he knew therefore that his struggle had been achieved at last, that he had now attained a plane of social equality with the Indians of the village. Whatever it may have seemed six months before, it was no small triumph now.
"I don't know your motive in doing so, but I thank you just the same." The Dakota chief smiled grimly. "We do not wish you to die yet," he said, speaking his English in the precise, measured manner of one to whom it is a foreign language. "Inmutanka, the Panther, bound it up, and he is one of the best healers we have."
Although he was an adopted Sioux, the son of Inmutanka, and had adapted himself to the life of the village, where he was not unhappy, he felt at times the call of his own people. The call was especially strong when he was alone in the lodge, and the snow was driving heavily outside. Then the faces of the scout, the Little Giant and the beaver hunter appeared very clearly before him.
"Rota was the largest that any of us has ever seen," said Inmutanka, "but the farther north we go the larger grow the great bears. Far up near the frozen seas it is said they are so large that they are almost as heavy as a buffalo. Word comes out of the far north that he has been found there having the weight of at least three of our ponies."
The valley and the slopes that were not too high and steep, afforded an extensive hunting range, despite the deep snow, and Will brought down with a lucky arrow a fine elk that made for him a position yet better in the village, as he and Inmutanka, his father, were entitled to the body, but instead divided at least half of it among the older and weaker men and women.
"If they propose," he said, "I'll offer good old Dr. Inmutanka in my place. He's nearer their age, and with his medical skill he'll be able to take care of them." "Inmutanka never had a wife. He always what you call in your language bachelor. Too late to change now." "But since you've raised this question I'll insist," said Will formidably.
The two men, however, had perished nobly and the people felt triumphant. Will examined the bears by the numerous torchlights. He and Xingudan and Inmutanka agreed that they were not the true grizzly of the Montana or Idaho mountains, but, like the first one, much larger beasts coming out of the far north.
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