in the sand. Sitting on a branch of this cedar is an
old woman. Her white locks hang crisp and short on her bony shoulders;
her face is covered with a semi-parchment, brown as the forest leaves,
and drawn tight over her high cheek bones; her eyes are small and sunken
in her head, but the fire has not yet gone out. An old elk skin robe,
tattered and torn, is thrown across her shoulders, with its few
porcupine quills still hanging by the sinew threads where they were
placed a century ago. The last of her race! Yes, long ago her people
have become extinct, passed away leaving her to die. But alas, death
does not claim her, and she wanders alone until picked up by the
mountain Absarokees.

I sat down by her side and asked her by sign talk: "Are you a Sioux?"
She shook her head. "Are you a Blackfoot?" Again she shook her head, and
the effort seemed to tire her. I made many signs of the different
tribes, but in the Crow sign she said "No" to them all. Her form seemed
to be of rawhide, and on her fingers were still a few old rings made
from the horn of the bighorn ram.

I gave her some of my lunch, as I ate, and she munched it with a set of
old teeth worn to the gums. She ate in silence until all was gone; then
I told her I was a medicine man, and asked her how old she was. She held
up ten stubs of fingers, all of which had been partly cut off while
mourning for dead relatives, then took them down until she had counted
one hundred and fifteen years. Her eyes brightened, and she fronted away
to the main range to a towering crag of granite, facing the north,
where Bull Elk Canyon empties into the Big Horn. She held her withered
arm high above her head and said in sign language:

"My people lived among the clouds. We were the Sheep Eaters who have
passed away, but on those walls are the paint rocks, where our
traditions are written on their face, chiseled with obsidian arrow
heads. Our people were not warriors. We worshipped the sun, and the sun
is bright and so were our people. Our men were good and our women were
like the sun. The Great Spirit has stamped our impressions on the rocks
by His lightnings; there are many of our people who were outlined on
those smooth walls years ago; then our people painted their figures, or
traced them with beautiful colored stones, and the pale face calls them
"painted rocks." Our people never came down into the valleys, but always
lived among the clouds, eating the mountain sheep and the goa