his stick horse into the thick shade of a lone oak tree that stood
beside the wide dusty road. His sore did not bother him, and he sat
with his back against the tree for a while, flipping the rag and
making figures in the dust with the pronged tail of his horse. Then
his hands were still, and as he ran from tune to tune with improvised
interludes, he droned a song of his prowess. Sometimes he sang words
and sometimes he sang thoughts. He sank farther and farther down and
looked up into the tree and ceased his song, chirping instead a
stuttering falsetto trill, not unlike a cricket's, holding his breath
as long as he could to draw it out to its finest strand; and thus with
his head on his arm and his arm on the tree root, he fell asleep.

The noon sun was on his legs when he awoke, and a strange dog was
sniffing at him. As he started up, he heard the clatter of a horse's
feet in the road, and saw an Indian woman trotting toward him on a
pony. In an instant he was a-wing with terror, scooting toward the
thick of the woods. He screamed as he ran, for his head was full of
Indian stories, and he knew that the only use Indians had for little
boys was to steal them and adopt them into the tribe. He heard the
brush crackling behind him, and he knew that the woman had turned off
the road to follow him. A hundred yards is a long way for a
terror-stricken little boy to run through tangled underbrush, and when
he had come to the high bank of the stream, he slipped down among the
tree roots and tried to hide. His little heart beat so fast that he
could not keep from panting, and the sound of breaking brush came
nearer and then stopped, and in a moment he looked up and saw the
squaw leaning over the bank, holding to the tree above him. She smiled
kindly at him and said:--

"Come on, boy--I won't hurt you. I as scared of you as you are of