to lose their confidence, and you know how easily their skeery faculties
are stampeded with an idea!"

"Where is she now?" demanded Peter, with a darkening face.

"Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon. I thought she might be a little
skeered of the braves, and I've kept them away. SHE'S all right, you
know; only if you intend to stay here long I'd"--

But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket of
cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's voices.
When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump,
surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old
women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had
already half mischievously, half curiously possessed themselves of her
dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves, and were parading before her
in their grotesque finery, apparently as much to her childish excited
amusement as their own. She was even answering their gesticulations with
equivalent gestures in her attempt to understand them, and trying amidst
shouts of laughter to respond to the monotonous chant of the old women
who were zigzagging a dance before her. With the gayly striped blankets
lying on the ground, the strings of beads, wampum, and highly colored
feathers hanging from the trees, and the flickering lights and shadows,
it was an innocent and even idyllic picture, but the more experienced
Peter saw in the performances only the uncertain temper and want of
consecutive idea of playing animals, and the stolid unwinking papoose in
his sister's lap gave his sentiment a momentary shock.

Seeing him approach she ran to meet him, the squaws and children
slinking away from his grave face. "I have had such a funny time, Peter!