thing she
claimed, I'd come into her life too late. How could she be the mother of
my children, when--I drank, and sold my ponies to buy liquor, for there
was no way out.

And by the time I'd only Tiger left, one night came Bull to find me just
as dusk was falling. He'd been away, I hadn't seen him for weeks, and
when he came to me in the Roundup saloon, I seen how frightened he was
of speaking to me. I was drunk, too, scarce knowing what he said, just
telling him to shut up and have a drink. Polly's bin hurt? Well, that's
all right--have rye--Polly's been shot? That's good, we'd all have
drinks. Was she dead?

She was dead.

And I was sober then as I am now.

"Murdered?" I asked.

"Jesse, she shot herself."

"Is that so?"

"Through the brow--above the eyes. Come, Jesse."

Next thing I was standing in the tent door, and it was so dark inside I
had to strike a match. The sulphur tip burned blue, the wood flared, and
for that moment, bending down, I seen the black dark hole between the
eyes, the smear of drying blood. Then the match went out, and I--that
was enough.

I gave Bull what I'd left, to pay for burial.

Then I was riding Tiger all alone, with my shadow drawin' slowly out
ahead as the moon waned.

CHAPTER V

THE BURNING BUSH

Among the Indians, before a boy gets rated warrior, he goes alone afoot,
naked, starvin', thirsty, way off to the back side of the desert. Thar
he just waits, suns, weeks, maybe a whole moon, till the Big Spirit
happens to catch his eye. Then the Big Spirit shows him a stick, or a
stone, or any sort of triflin' common thing, which is to be his
medicine, his wampum, the charm which guards him, hunting, or in war.
There's the ordeal, too, by torture, done in the medicine lodge, so all
the chiefs can see he's fit for bearin' arms. He's given the war-path
secret, taking his rank as a man.

Among them Bible Indians you'll remember a feller called Moses, out at
the back side of the desert, seen the Big Spirit in a burning bush.
Later his tribe set up a medicine lodge, and the hull story's mighty
natural.

This Indian life explains a lot to men like me, raised ignorant, never
grown-up--or at least not to hurt. I had the ordeal by torture, which
done me good, and I been whar Moses went, and the Lord Christ too,
seeking the medicine of the Almighty Father.

For as I'd broken ponies for their good till they got peaceful, so I was
broke myself. Bein' full of pride an' s