Medicine-man. Day after day, they returned with heavy faces to the
anxiously waiting tribe.

And as the days passed, the rumours grew more black. The Senakals were
in movement now. They were allies of the Yellow Dogs, related to them by
ties of blood. The Senakals were a powerful tribe. If they joined forces
with the Yellow Dogs, the strength of the enemy would be enormously
increased.

It was late October now, or, as the Indians named the season,
When-the-Geese-fly-South. In the rich meadows along the Wide-Water
river, the bunch-grass was very long, and on the slopes of the eastern
hills the huckleberries were large and ripe. But no Indian ponies grazed
in the meadows now, having been brought closer into camp: for fear of a
hostile raid; nor, in the early morning or late evening, were any
parties of squaws to be seen out on the prairies, going to the hills, or
returning with baskets full of fruit.

Among all the families in the camp, that of Dusty Star was the most
disturbed. His parents had always hoped that, sooner or later, he would
come back. His mother, especially, had grieved for his absence, and had
looked anxiously for his return. It was a pity, she said, they had not
taken his part about Kiopo. Only then, who could possibly have foreseen
that all this medicine power which Lone Chief made so much of would be
discovered in the wolf? But, even so, she thought, they might have been
kinder to Dusty Star himself, and have tried more fully to understand
his feelings for the wolf. And after all, was it not his father who had
presented him with the creature in the beginning, when it was nothing
but a little compact bundle of fat and fur, not yet very steady on its
legs? She was now quite clear in her own mind that they had been
decidedly to blame. Day after day, she waited anxiously for tidings of
Lone Chief, and, as night after night brought no news of his
whereabouts, her anxiety grew.

The only person who clung stubbornly to her old opinions was
Sitting-Always. But that was only to be expected, since she was so very
like her name. Once the mind of the old squaw had laid an opinion, she
would sit on it like a broody hen, till it went addled in her head. She
had never really liked Dusty Star, and she had always hated the wolf. If
the wolf _had_ a medicine (which, for her part, she very much doubted)
as everybody said, she had made up her mind that it was a bad medicine,
and could not help the tribe. As a protest a