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Updated: June 4, 2025
Na-tee-kah had all the load a girl of her size could comfortably carry when she set out with her people. So had all the rest except the dignified warriors. For that reason all the urging in the world could not get out of that dispirited cavalcade one-half the speed attained by Two Arrows and One-eye the previous evening.
What the far Western tribes did in those days nobody knows, but all the tribes which have migrated out of the woods into the prairie country have become "pony-men." Na-tee-kah could not remember another time when she, daughter of a chief, had been compelled to carry so much, even for a short distance.
She stood it pretty well, but the other contents of the box had less interest now. She and Na-tee-kah preferred to go on with the brush and comb. Even Two Arrows looked at them so enviously that Sile told him the white chiefs did comb their hair. It was enough. Squaws were made to serve braves, and they were both commanded to take charge of his long, bushy, and decidedly tangled barbering.
Judge Parks and Yellow Pine had their hands very full of an inspection of the cargoes of the two wagons. The men toiled vigorously at the stone wall and at the shingle riving. Ha-ha-pah-no and Na-tee-kah were as busy as bees over the lengthening list of marvels put before their eyes.
He had put into it some things which could hardly be useful to him, even if he should be cast away upon a mountain, as Robinson Crusoe was upon an island, and it was so much the better fun for Two Arrows and Na-tee-kah.
She was only the step-mother of Na-tee-kah and her brother, and had a pappoose of her own as part of her burden, but she took her full share of the family pride when her husband drew himself grimly up and shut off the strong temptation to "whoop." "Young brave," he said to her with great calmness. "Great chief some day. All like father. Same. Go steal pony pretty soon."
He had picked up more English words, somehow or other, than he had at first acknowledged, but Sile found it needful to work the sign language pretty industriously for all that. Na-tee-kah had spent her life in the close retirement of an Indian village. She had been housed up among plains and mountains from all the world, and knew nothing about it.
Bow and arrows good enough for boy." He said it almost bitterly, and Na-tee-kah stamped on the ground sharply as she responded, "Two Arrows is a young chief. Big brave. Not a boy any more. Kill grisly. Kill cougar and big-horn. Bring back pony. Great chief in a little while. Give him rifle."
No white boy with a new stovepipe hat and a pair of yellow kid gloves ever wanted to walk through so many streets or past quite so many "boarding-schools" as did Two Arrows only that his showing-off places were such as he was best acquainted with. Na-tee-kah was more quiet than even Ha-ha-pah-no, for that highly respectable squaw had done up her head remarkably.
He stood in front of his father's lodge, waiting for the breakfast that was now sure to come, when a light hand was laid upon his arm and a soft musical voice exclaimed, triumphantly, "Two Arrows! Name!" "Ugh," said he. "Na-tee-kah." He hardly looked around, but the pleasantest face in all that band was smiling upon him.
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