s
and things--her red and yellow tunic, her gorgeous moccasons, her
earrings and noserings and bracelets and armlets and beads? Why, she was
ju-u-u-ust as ragged and dirty!

All this and more Benny's tone expressed when he said: "Why, you ain't
an _Injun_, be you?"

"Well, I _was_. I ain't nothing at all now. I ain't even a squaw, and
they _said_ they was going to make a Christian on me. I _was_ a
Chetonquin."

"Oh, yes," said Benny, looking at her now with the interest attaching to
one who _had_ worn the feathers, and beads, and moccasons, and rings.
"Well, what did you do when the colonel told you to go West?"

"We had a fight."

That was satisfactory to Benny. "Which whipped?" he asked, with his own
native briskness, as if this, now, was common ground, and he was ready
to talk at his ease.

"Which a'most always whips? It was a hard fight. I hid behind a big tree
and watched it. When I saw my father shot I started to go to him and a
shot struck me. See there!" said she, pushing up her coarse gray locks
and showing a deeper, wider seam than the creases and wrinkles on her
face. "A bullet grazed me hard and I was stunned and blinded with the
blood, and couldn't run, but my people had to. They didn't any on 'em
see or know about me, I s'pose, and I laid there and sorter went to
sleep. Colonel Hammerton took a notion to pick me up when he rode over
the ground he had soaked with the blood of my people--ground that
_belonged to my people_," shrieked the woman, straightening herself up
and shaking her fists in the air.

Benny liked that. Even Fanny gazed at the strange creature with
fascination. And when the Indian's excitement abated and she ceased to
mutter and chatter to herself and sunk her face into her palms again,
gazing absently on the ground, Fanny pulled Benny's sleeve and
whispered, "Ask her what he did then, after he picked her up."

"What did he do with you then?" ventured Benny.

The old woman started, and gazed at them curiously, as if she had
forgotten all about them, and had to recall them out of the distant
past. "What did who do?" said she.

"What did Colonel Hammerton do with you when he picked you up?"

"Oh, I didn't know who picked me up--thought 'twas some of my people, I
s'pose. Colonel Hammerton carried me off to the fort, and then took me
to Washington: said he was going to make a Christian on me. I had to
stay in houses--_sleep_ in houses!--like being nailed up in a box. Ugh!
what a