ty good one. In broken Sioux
and signs we advised him to wait--mebbe-no-die. Mebbe-walk-some-more. He
shook his head stubbornly. His herbs--he was a medicine man who had
healed many sick ones--had not worked. Even his _pazunta_ had failed.

The Indian's _pazunta_ was his shield against disease--against all evil.
It drives the Evil Spirit away. It may be anything he selects--an herb,
a stone, a rabbit's foot--so long as he selects it secretly and divulges
to no one what it is. The _pazunta_ is invested with divine curative
power, according to the Indians.

When he got back to his wigwam with the satin-lined "last-sleep-box,"
Porcupine Bear found his _to-wea_ cooking supper; so the old brave, it
was said, slept in the good soft bed himself. "Why not?" said Ida Mary.
He had slept on the ground and fought many hard battles; let him have
his cushioned resting place while he could enjoy it; but I shuddered at
the thought.

A week or so later he came again. It was a day when I was at the
breaking point. He stood looking at me, shaking his head as he had done
over his _to-wea_. I must have looked like a ghost, for in a gesture of
friendship he said:

"You want my last-sleep-box?"

The prairie fire had not got me down, but at the thought of that box I
went to bed and stayed there three days.

[Illustration]

XV

UP IN SMOKE

There was almost $750 in the tin box down in the trunk ready to be
deposited. At breakfast we exulted over it. The Ammons sisters were
always draining the bank dry. Sedgwick would open his eyes when we
walked into the bank with that bag of money.

We planned to go to Presho that day. It was hardly safe to have so much
money in the shack, and we were eager to put it in a safe place. It
represented months of planning and effort and hard work. But the labor
didn't seem bad to look back on that morning, not with the reward at
hand. It had been worth while, because the end of the road was in sight
and we had accomplished much that we had hoped to do--more, in some
respects.

It was unbearably hot that morning, and we decided against the trip to
Presho. After all, one more day wouldn't matter, and the sun was so
scorching we quailed at the thought of that long ride. There was an
ominous oppression in the air, and heat waves made the ground appear to
waver before our eyes. Here and there flames flared up without any
explainable origin, as though from the heat of the grass itself.

The day c