in precisely the same place and in precisely the same attitude. Once,
in his dreams, wherein he still wandered through fields of scarlet
flowers, he watched a bud unfolding. It opened with a sound like a
revolver shot, or was it really a revolver? The boy turned over on his
side, for a savory odor greeted his nostrils, and he looked wonderingly
around. Five Feathers had evidently not been sitting there throughout
that long June afternoon, for, within an arm's length was the jolliest
little tepee made of many branches of poplar and cottonwood, sides and
roof all one thick mass of green leaves and branches woven together like
basketwork, a bed of short, dry prairie grass, fragrant and brown, his
own saddlebags and single blanket for pillow and mattress. And on the
fire the teapot, steaming with that delicious savory odor.

"What is it?" asked the boy, indicating the cooking.

"Prairie chicken," smiled the Indian. "I shoot while you sleep."

So _that_ was the bursting of the scarlet bud!

"Very good chicken," continued the Indian. "Very fat--good for eat, good
soup, both."

So they made their supper off the tender stew, and soaked some hardtack
in the soup. It seemed to Jerry a royal meal, and he made up his mind
that, when he arrived home, he would get his mother to stew a prairie
hen in the teapot some day; it tasted so much better than anything he
had ever eaten before.

The sun had set, and the long, long twilight of the north was gathering.
Five Feathers built up the fire, for the prairie night brings a chill,
even in June.

"Did you see them again, the red flowers, while you slept?" he asked the
boy.

"Yes; fields of them," replied Jerry. Then added, "Why?"

"It is good," said the Indian. "Very good. You will now have what we
call 'The Scarlet Eye.'"

"What's that?" asked Jerry, half frightened.

"It's very good. You will yourself be a great medicine man--what you
white men call 'doctor.' You like to be that?"

"I never thought of studying medicine until to-day," said the boy,
excitedly; "but, just as Billy rode away, something seemed to grip me.
I made up my mind then and there to be a doctor."

"That is because you have seen 'The Scarlet Eye,'" said the Indian,
quietly.

"Tell me of it, will you, Five Feathers?" asked the boy, gently.

"Yes, but first I lift you on to bed." And, gathering Jerry in his
strong, lean arms, he laid him on the grass couch in the green tepee,
looked at his foot, loose