He passed in
and out among the scattered tepees, speaking a word here and there to the
men as he passed, or nodding a greeting. The latter being the more
frequent of the two, for the Indian is a silent man.

The life amidst which he was walking was too familiar to cause such a man
as he any unusual interest. Perhaps it was because he felt he had a
certain underhand power with these people; like a person who loses
interest in the thing which he has mastered. Certain it is that the busy
homes he beheld were all unnoticed. The smoke-begrimed tepees with their
great wooden trailers propped against them; the strings of drying meats
stretching along under the boughs of adjacent trees. The bucks huddled, in
spite of the warmth of summer, in their parti-colored blankets, gazing
indolently at their squaws pounding the early berries into a sort of muddy
preserve, or dressing a skin for manufacture into leggings, moccasins, or
buckskin shirt. He gave no heed to the swarms of papooses, like so many
flies buzzing round the tepees, whooping in imitation of their father
braves, or amusing themselves with the pursuit of one of the many currish
camp dogs, which, from their earliest years, they love to persecute to the
limits of the poor beasts' endurance. The totem poles with their hideous
carved heads had no meaning for him, just as the dried scalps which hung
from the tepee poles might have been rabbit skins for all he thought of
them.

Just now his purpose was to reach the house of Little Black Fox, and this
he came to at last. It was a large building; next to the Mission and
Agency it was by far the largest house on the Reservation. It was built of
logs and thatch and plaster, and backed into a thick clump of shady maple
trees. The son was more lavish than the father. Big Wolf had always been
content to live in a tepee. He was an older type of chief. The son moved
with the times and was given to display.

Nevil raised the latch of the door and walked in, and his manner was that
of a privileged visitor. He entered the spacious living-room without word
for those he beheld gathered there. He walked to a certain vacant place,
and sat down upon the mud floor. It was at once plain that he had been
expected. More, it was evident that he belonged by right to that
gathering.

Despite the display in the dimensions of Little Black Fox's house the
interior revealed the old savage. There was nothing civilized about the
council-chamber. Ther