pink;
similarly, alder bark furnished rich orange, and butternut bark a brown.
Oak chips, with a few bits of iron in the pot, dyed black.

"Must wait till summer for red and green," said the Indian. "Red comes
only from berries; the best is the blitum. We call it squaw-berry and
mis-caw-wa, yellow comes from the yellow root (Hydrastis)."

But black, white, orange, pink, brown, and a dull red made by a double
dip of orange and pink, are a good range of colour. The method in using
the quills is simple. An awl to make holes in the bark for each;
the rough parts behind are concealed afterward with a lining of bark
stitched over them; and before the winter was over, Rolf had made a
birch-bark box, decorated lid and all, with porcupine quill work, in
which he kept the sable skin that was meant to buy Annette's new
dress, the costume she had dreamed of, the ideal and splendid, almost
unbelievable vision of her young life, ninety-five cents' worth of
cotton print.

There was one other point of dangerous friction. Whenever it fell to
Quonab to wash the dishes, he simply set them on the ground and let
Skookum lick them off. This economical arrangement was satisfactory to
Quonab, delightful to Skookum, and apparently justified by the finished
product, but Rolf objected. The Indian said: "Don't he eat the same food
as we do? You cannot tell if you do not see."

Whenever he could do so, Rolf washed the doubtful dishes over again, yet
there were many times when this was impossible, and the situation became
very irritating. But he knew that the man who loses his temper has
lost the first round of the fight, so, finding the general idea of
uncleanness without avail, he sought for some purely Indian argument.
As they sat by the evening fire, one day, he led up to talk of his
mother--of her power as a medicine woman, of the many evil medicines
that harmed her. "It was evil medicine for her if a dog licked her hand
or touched her food. A dog licked her hand and the dream dog came to her
three days before she died." After a long pause, he added, "In some ways
I am like my mother."

Two days later, Rolf chanced to see his friend behind the shanty give
Skookum the pan to clean off after they had been frying deer fat. The
Indian had no idea that Rolf was near, nor did he ever learn the truth
of it.

That night, after midnight, the lad rose quietly, lighted the pine
splints that served them for a torch, rubbed some charcoal around each