land and money when I get them. In bygone days, brave young men of the
order of the White-Horse-Riders sought out the aged, the poor, the
widows and orphans to aid them, but they did their good work without
pay. The White-Horse-Riders are gone. The times are changed. I am a poor
old Indian woman. I need warm clothing before winter begins to blow its
icicles through us. I need fire wood. I need food. As you have said, a
little help is better than none."

Hereupon the two pretenders scored another success.

They rose to their feet. They had eaten up all the fried bread and
drained the coffeepot. They shook hands with Blue-Star Woman and
departed. In the quiet that followed their departure she sat munching
her small piece of bread, which, by a lucky chance, she had taken on her
plate before the hungry wolves had come. Very slowly she ate the
fragment of fried bread as if to increase it by diligent mastication. A
self-condemning sense of guilt disturbed her. In her dire need she had
become involved with tricksters. Her nephews laughingly told her, "We
use crooks, and crooks use us in the skirmish over Indian lands."

The friendly shade of the house shrank away from her and hid itself
under the narrow eaves of the dirt covered roof. She shrugged her
shoulders. The sun high in the sky had witnessed the affair and now
glared down upon her white head. Gathering upon her arm the mats and
cooking utensils, she hobbled into her log hut.

Under the brooding wilderness silence, on the Sioux Indian Reservation,
the superintendent summoned together the leading Indian men of the
tribe. He read a letter which he had received from headquarters in
Washington, D.C. It announced the enrollment of Blue-Star Woman on their