I was careful not to express
even by a look or tone--that mother and I would never again ride this
road or look out upon this lovely scene together, and something in her
eyes and the melancholy sweetness of her lips told me that she was
bidding the landscape a long farewell.

We rode the remaining portion of our way in somber mood, although we all
agreed that it was a colorful finish of a perfect day--a day to be
recalled in after years with a tender heart-ache.

[It is all changed now. Aunt Lorette has gone to her reward. Uncle
Frank, old and lonely, is living on the village side of the ridge and
strangers are in the old house!]

That night, Zulime and I talked over the agreement I had made with
father, and we planned a way to carry it out. Almost as excited about
the Yellowstone as he, she was quite ready to camp through as I
suggested. "We will hire a team at Livingston, and with our own outfit,
will be independent of stages and hotels--but first I must show you some
Indians. We will visit Standing Rock and see the Sioux in their 'Big
Sunday.' Father can meet us at Bismark after we come out."

With the confidence of a child she accepted my arrangement and on the
first day of July we were in the stage ambling across the hot, dry
prairie which lay between Bismark and Fort Yates. Empty, arid and
illimitable the rolling treeless landscape oppressed us both, and yet
there was a stern majesty in its sweep, and the racing purple shadows of
the dazzling clouds lent it color and movement. To me it was all
familiar, but when, after an all-day ride, we came down into the valley
of the Muddy Missouri, the sheen of its oily red current was quite as
grateful to me as to my weary wife.

Our only means of reaching the Agency was a small rowboat which seemed a
frail ferry even to me. How it appeared to Zulime, I dared not ask--but
she unhesitatingly stepped in and took her seat beside me. I think she
accepted it as a part of the strange and hardy world in which her
husband was at home.

We were both silent on that crossing, for our slender craft struggled
anxiously with the boiling, silent, turbid current, and when we landed,
the tense look on Zulime's face gave place to a smile.--Half an hour
later we were sitting at supper in a fly-specked boarding house,
surrounded by squaw-men and half-breed Sioux, who were enjoying the
luxury of a white man's table as a part of their Fourth of July
celebration. My artist wife was being ed