This seemed to break the evil moment, and she hastened out to hold my
head against her cheek.

"My daughter, what madness possessed you to bring home such a fellow?"
she asked, pointing at the driver, who was fumbling in his pockets for
change while he held the bill I gave him between his jagged teeth.

"Bring him! Why, no, mother, he has brought me! He is a driver!" I
exclaimed.

Upon this revelation, my mother threw her arms about me and apologized
for her mistaken inference. We laughed away the momentary hurt. Then she
built a brisk fire on the ground in the tepee, and hung a blackened
coffeepot on one of the prongs of a forked pole which leaned over the
flames. Placing a pan on a heap of red embers, she baked some unleavened
bread. This light luncheon she brought into the cabin, and arranged on a
table covered with a checkered oilcloth.

My mother had never gone to school, and though she meant always to give
up her own customs for such of the white man's ways as pleased her, she
made only compromises. Her two windows, directly opposite each other,
she curtained with a pink-flowered print. The naked logs were unstained,
and rudely carved with the axe so as to fit into one another. The sod
roof was trying to boast of tiny sunflowers, the seeds of which had
probably been planted by the constant wind. As I leaned my head against
the logs, I discovered the peculiar odor that I could not forget. The
rains had soaked the earth and roof so that the smell of damp clay was
but the natural breath of such a dwelling.