Part 15 (1/2)

Five Feathers sprang to his feet. ”Good! Good!” he exclaimed. ”I scared he would not see them. If he see red flowers, he all right. Sometimes, when they don't see it, they not get well soon.” Then, under his breath, ”The Scarlet Eye!”

”I saw them all right!” almost laughed the boy. ”Miles of them. I could see and smell them. They smelled like smoke--like prairie fires.”

”Get well right away!” chuckled the Indian. ”_Very_ good to smell them.”

Then to Billy: ”You eat. You get ready. You ride now to Fort o'

Farewell.”

So they built up the dying fire, made tea, cooked a little bacon, and all three ate heartily.

”I'll leave you the teapot, of course,” said Billy, taking a dozen hardtack and one tin of sardines. ”Slough water's good enough for me.”

But Five Feathers gripped him by the arm--an iron grip--not at all with the gentle fingers that had so recently dressed the other boy's wounded ankle. ”You not go that way!” he glared, his fine eyes dark and scowling. ”Yes, we keep teapot, but you take bread, and antelope, and more fat fish,” pointing to the sardines. ”Fat fish very good for long ride. You take, or I not let you go!”

There was such a strange severity in his dark face that Billy did not argue the matter, but quietly obeyed, taking one loaf of bread, half the antelope, and three tins of the ”fat fish.”

”Plenty prairie chicken here,” explained the Indian. ”I make good soup for Little Brave.”

”What a nice name to call me, Five Feathers!” smiled Jerry.

”Yes, you Little Brave,” replied the Indian. ”Little boy, but very big brave.”

At the last moment Jerry and his brother clasped hands. ”I hate to leave you, old man,” said Billy, a little unsteadily.

”Why, I'm not afraid,” answered the boy. ”You and father and I all know that I am with the best Indian in the Hudson's Bay country--we _do_ know it, don't we, Billy?”

”I'll stake my life on that,” replied Billy, swinging into his saddle.

”Remember, Jerry, it's only a hundred miles. I'll be there in two days, and the wagon will be here in another two.”

”Yes, I'll remember,” replied the sick boy.

Then Billy struck rather abruptly up the half-obliterated buffalo trail.

Several times he turned in his saddle, looking back and waving his bandanna, and each time the Indian stood erect and lifted his open palm.

The receding horse and rider grew smaller, less, fainter, then they blurred into the horizon. The sick boy closed his eyes, that ached from watching the fading figure. He was utterly alone, with leagues of untracked prairie about him, alone with Five Feathers, a strange Indian, who sat silently nearby.

When Jerry awoke, the sun was almost setting, and Five Feathers was in precisely the same place and in precisely the same att.i.tude. Once, in his dreams, wherein he still wandered through fields of scarlet flowers, he watched a bud unfolding. It opened with a sound like a revolver shot, or was it really a revolver? The boy turned over on his side, for a savory odor greeted his nostrils, and he looked wonderingly around. Five Feathers had evidently not been sitting there throughout that long June afternoon, for, within an arm's length was the jolliest little tepee made of many branches of poplar and cottonwood, sides and roof all one thick ma.s.s of green leaves and branches woven together like basketwork, a bed of short, dry prairie gra.s.s, fragrant and brown, his own saddlebags and single blanket for pillow and mattress. And on the fire the teapot, steaming with that delicious savory odor.

”What is it?” asked the boy, indicating the cooking.

”Prairie chicken,” smiled the Indian. ”I shoot while you sleep.”

So _that_ was the bursting of the scarlet bud!

”Very good chicken,” continued the Indian. ”Very fat--good for eat, good soup, both.”

So they made their supper off the tender stew, and soaked some hardtack in the soup. It seemed to Jerry a royal meal, and he made up his mind that, when he arrived home, he would get his mother to stew a prairie hen in the teapot some day; it tasted so much better than anything he had ever eaten before.

The sun had set, and the long, long twilight of the north was gathering.

Five Feathers built up the fire, for the prairie night brings a chill, even in June.