ucated swiftly!

The tribe was again encamped in a wide circle just west of the Fort,
precisely as when my brother and I had visited it three years before,
while the store and the Agency swarmed with native men and women, many
in mixed costume of cloth and skin. Zulime's artistic joy in them filled
me with complacent satisfaction. I had the air of a showman rejoicing in
his exhibition hall. With keen interest we watched the young warriors as
they came whirling in on their swift ponies, each in his gayest
garments, the tail of his horse decorated with rosettes and ribbons.
Possessing the swiftness and the grace of Centaurs, coming and going
like sudden whirlwinds, they were superb embodiments of a race which was
passing. Some of the older men remembered me, and greeted me as one
friendly to their cause--but for the most part the younger folk eyed us
with indifference.

That night a singular and savage change in the weather took place. The
wind shifted to the southeast and took on the heat of a furnace. By ten
o'clock next morning dirt was blowing in clouds and to walk the street
was an ordeal. All day Zulime remained in her room virtually a prisoner.
Night fell with the blast still roaring, and the dust rising from the
river banks like smoke, presented a strange and sinister picture of
wrath. It was as though the water, itself, had taken fire from the
lightning which plunged in branching streams across the sky. Thunder
muttered incessantly all through that singular and solemn night, a night
which somehow foreshadowed the doom which was about to overtake the
Sioux.

The following day, however, was clear and cool, and we spent most of it
in walking about the camp, visiting the teepees of which there were
several hundreds set in a huge ellipse, all furnished in primitive
fashion--some of them very neatly. Over four thousand Sioux were said to
be in this circle, and their coming and going, their camp fires and
feasting groups composed a scene well worth the long journey we had
endured. Strange as this life seemed to my wife it was quite familiar to
me. To me these people were not savages, they were folks--and in their
festivity I perceived something of the spirit of a county fair in
Wisconsin.

Our guide about the camp, the half-breed son of a St. Louis trader, was
a big, fine-featured, intelligent man of about my own age, whose
pleasant lips, and deep brown eyes attracted me. He knew everybody, both
white and red, and