I

White Otter's Own Shadow


White Otter's heart was bad. He sat alone on the rim-rocks of the bluffs
overlooking the sunlit valley. To an unaccustomed eye from below he
might have been a part of nature's freaks among the sand rocks. The
yellow grass sloped away from his feet mile after mile to the timber,
and beyond that to the prismatic mountains. The variegated lodges of the
Chis-chis-chash village dotted the plain near the sparse woods of the
creek-bottom; pony herds stood quietly waving their tails against the
flies or were driven hither and yon by the herdboys--giving variety to
the tremendous sweep of the Western landscape.

This was a day of peace--such as comes only to the Indians in contrast
to the fierce troubles which nature stores up for the other intervals.
The enemy, the pinch of the shivering famine, and the Bad Gods were
absent, for none of these things care to show themselves in the white
light of a midsummer's day. There was peace with all the world except
with him. He was in a fierce dejection over the things which had come to
him, or those which had passed him by. He was a boy--a fine-looking,
skillfully modeled youth--as beautiful a thing, doubtless, as God ever
created in His sense of form; better than his sisters, better than the
four-foots, or the fishes, or the birds, and he meant so much more than
the inanimate things, in so far as we can see. He had the body given to
him and he wanted to keep it, but there were the mysterious demons of
the darkness, the wind and the flames; there were the monsters from the