e eyes, and made the
paint crack. She declared she would not enter the tepee unless the husky
was first driven out. When Nikana explained that Kiopo was not a husky
but a true wild wolf, and that when he snarled through his teeth it was
best to let him be, Sitting-Always was more displeased than ever. Like
most old Indians she firmly believed that the wolves had a "medicine,"
and by a "medicine" she meant a power that was stronger than either
wolves or men. She herself was a great believer in "medicine." Half the
things with which her tepee was stuffed were supposed to possess a
medicine of one kind or another. Only she infinitely preferred tame
medicine--the sort you stored in painted parfleches--to the wild kind on
four legs that bared its fangs and snarled. So when she had shot out a
few biting remarks about beasts and boys in general, she took her yellow
face out of the opening and stalked angrily away.

After that Dusty Star saw her quite often when Nikana took him with her
on visits to her tepee, and the yellow maple-leaf face had given way to
the buffalo-hide one, and her teeth were the only yellow things she had
in her head. By degrees, his awe of her wore away, till one day when she
presented him with a rich plateful of sarvis-berry stew, he arrived at
the conclusion that, after all, a grandmother, like the buffalo, could
have her uses, and be very nearly pleasant when she did not paint her
face.

Kiopo, however, never changed his mind. Not even the richest stew could
have made any difference. With or without her paint, his deep wolf
wisdom taught him that here was an enemy, and whenever she came near
him, he always showed his teeth.

It was in the moon that the Indians call the Mad Moon, or, as we call
it, November, that Kiopo began to take on strange ways, and to stay
away, for days together. When he returned from these mysterious
absences, he was in the habit of sneaking back into camp under cover of
the darkness. In the morning, when Dusty Star spoke to him very plainly,
and asked him where he had been, Kiopo would turn his head away with an
uncomfortable expression in his eyes. Dusty Star began to watch the
wolf's movements, growing more and more anxious to find out where he
went. And the closer the human brother watched, the deeper grew the
wolf-brother's cunning day by day. Neither going, nor returning, did
Kiopo let himself be seen.

Dusty Star grew afraid lest he should disappear once for all, an