Chapter 2. Rolf Kittering and the Soldier Uncle

A feller that chatters all the time is bound to talk a certain
amount of drivel. -- The Sayings of Si Sylvanne

This was the Crow Moon, the white man's March.
The Grass Moon was at hand, and already the
arrow bands of black-necked honkers were passing
northward from the coast, sending down as they flew
the glad tidings that the Hunger Moon was gone, that
spring was come, yea, even now was in the land. And the
flicker clucked from a high, dry bough, the spotted
woodwale drummed on his chosen branch, the partridge
drummed in the pine woods, and in the sky the wild
ducks, winging, drummed their way. What wonder that
the soul of the Indian should seek expression in the drum
and the drum song of his race?

Presently, as though remembering something, he went
quietly to the southward under the ridge, just where it
breaks to let the brook go by, along the edge of Strickland's
Plain, and on that hill of sliding stone he found, as
he always had, the blue-eyed liver-leaf smiling, the first
sweet flower of spring! He did not gather it, he only sat
down and looked at it. He did not smile, or sing, or
utter words, or give it a name, but he sat beside it and
looked hard at it, and, in the first place, he went there
knowingly to find it. Who shall say that its beauty did