the sun was hot on his back; so he
took the rag in one hand and his bridle in the other, and limped on
his stick horse into the thick shade of a lone oak tree that stood
beside the wide dusty road. His sore did not bother him, and he sat
with his back against the tree for a while, flipping the rag and
making figures in the dust with the pronged tail of his horse. Then
his hands were still, and as he ran from tune to tune with improvised
interludes, he droned a song of his prowess. Sometimes he sang words
and sometimes he sang thoughts. He sank farther and farther down and
looked up into the tree and ceased his song, chirping instead a
stuttering falsetto trill, not unlike a cricket's, holding his breath
as long as he could to draw it out to its finest strand; and thus with
his head on his arm and his arm on the tree root, he fell asleep.

The noon sun was on his legs when he awoke, and a strange dog was
sniffing at him. As he started up, he heard the clatter of a horse's
feet in the road, and saw an Indian woman trotting toward him on a
pony. In an instant he was a-wing with terror, scooting toward the
thick of the woods. He screamed as he ran, for his head was full of
Indian stories, and he knew that the only use Indians had for little
boys was to steal them and adopt them into the tribe. He heard the
brush crackling behind him, and he knew that the woman had turned off
the road to follow him. A hundred yards is a long way for a
terror-stricken little boy to run through tangled underbrush, and when
he had come to the high bank of the stream, he slipped down among the
tree roots and tried to hide. His little heart beat so fast that he
could not keep from panting, and the sound of breaking brush came
nearer and then stopped, and in a moment he looked up and saw the
squaw leaning over the bank, holding to the tree above him. She smiled
kindly at him and said:--

"Come on, boy--I won't hurt you. I as scared of you as you are of
me."

She bent over and took him by the arm and lifted him to her. She got
on her pony and put him on before her and soothed his fright, as they
rode slowly through the wood to the road, where they came to a great
band of Indians, all riding ponies.

It seemed to the boy that he had never imagined there were so many
people in the whole world; there was some parley among them, and the
band set out on the road again, with the squaw in advance. They were
but a few yards from the forks of the road,