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All the other Indians had long ago gone West. Donee had nothing and nobody to play with. She was as easily scared as a rabbit; yet sometimes, when Oostogah was gone for days together, she was so lonely that she would venture down through the swamp to peep out at the water-mill and the two or three houses which the white people had built.
"Sell my land for big pile money." "Oh, very well. I don't want to buy your land. There's thousands of acres to be had for the asking, but there's not such a dress as that in the United States. I had that dress made on purpose for you, Oostogy. I said: 'Make me a dress for the son of a great chief. Oostogah grunted, but his eyes began to sparkle. "Here now, Oostogy, just try it on to please me.
She saw, sometimes, his two little girls and boy playing about the mill-door, and they were round and fat, and jolly, just like their father. At last, one day Oostogah went down to the mill, and Donee plucked up her courage and followed him.
Better if that were the end of Oostogah." Donee, opening her tired eyes, saw the blue carpet and the white bed where she lay, and the red dahlias shining in the sun and looking in at the window, and beside her were the children, and the children's mother smiling down on her with tears in her eyes. By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
When she was there hiding close behind the trough in which the horses were watered, so that nobody could see her, she heard the miller say to her brother: "You ought to go to work to clear your land, my lad. In two years there will be hundreds of people moving in here, and you own the best part of the valley." Oostogah nodded. "The whole country once belonged to my people."
When Oostogah had gone, she set out her little dishes under a big oak, and dressed herself in her lovely frock, though she knew the party could not begin for hours and hours. The brown cakes and honey, and scarlet haws, were in the white dishes, and the gold pitcher, with a big purple flower, was in the middle. Donee sat down and looked at it all.
Inside, packed in thin slips of paper, was a set of dishes; pure white, with the tiniest rose-bud in the middle of each; cups, saucers, meat-dish, coffee-pot, and all; and, below all, a pitcher, with sand on the brown bottom, but the top and handle of solid gold! Donee went back to the hut, trotting along beside Oostogah, her roll of calico under her arm.
"Come," he said, pointing beyond the great river to the dark woods. "We will come back here again, Oostogah?" "No; we will never come back." Donee went to the tree and looked down at the party she had made; at the little dishes with the rose on each. But she did not lift one of them up. She took off her pretty dress and laid it beside them, and, going to the hut, put on her old rags again.
The tears rushed to her eyes. "What did you do? What did you do?" "Well, there wasn't but one thing to do, and I did that." He went out to the wagon and carried in the little Indian girl, and laid her on the bed. "Poor child! Poor child! Where is Oostogah?" The miller shook his head. "Don't ask any questions about him. The raven flew away to the woods, and was never heard of again.
Donee came up then, and stood directly before him, looking up at him. But she said nothing. It is not the habit of Indian women and children to speak concerning matters of importance. Oostogah pushed her out of the way, and, with the trader, went into the hut to finish their bargain. In an hour or two her brother came to Donee. He had his new clothes in a pack on his back.
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