they carried nothing which the
white man had brought to them. They even took the metal fringes off
their shirts. They believed that if they gave up all signs of the whites
the Great Spirit would turn his face upon them again."

"Did Sitting Bull take part in this?" I asked.

"He encouraged the meeting at his camp and gave his cattle to feed the
people, but he was never able to dream like the rest. He never really
believed in it. He wanted to but he couldn't. He was too deep a thinker.
He often talked with me about it."

At a point about twenty miles from The Fort, Primeau left us to visit a
ranchman with whom he had some business and left us to drive on with a
guide to his cattle-ranch where we were to stay all night.

The ranch house turned out to be a rude low shack, and here Zulime had
her first touch of genuine cowboy life. The foreman had not been
expecting ladies for supper and the food he had prepared was of the
usual camp sort. He explained that he and his men had finished their
meal, and then, leading the way to the kitchen, showed us the food and
said heartily, "Help yourself."

On the back of the stove was a pot half filled with a mixture of boiled
rice and prunes. In the oven was some soggy bread, and on the hearth
some cold bacon. A can half filled with pale brown coffee added the
finishing touch to a layout perfectly familiar to me. I thanked the cook
and proceeded to dish out some of the rice whose grayish color aroused
Zulime's distrust. She refused to even taste it. "It looks as if it were
filled with dirt--or ashes."

"That's its natural complexion," I explained. "This is the unpolished
kind of rice. It is much more nutritious than the other kind."

She could not eat any of the bread, and when she tried the coffee she
was utterly discouraged. Nevertheless her kindliness of heart led her to
conceal her disgust. She emptied her rice into the stove and threw her
cup of coffee from the window in order that the cook might think that
she had eaten her share of the supper.

The foreman who came in a few minutes later to see that we were getting
fed politely inquired, "Is there anything else I can get you, miss?"

She really needed something to eat and yet she was puzzled to know what
to ask for. At last, in the belief that she was asking for the simplest
possible thing, she smiled sweetly and said, "I should like a glass of
milk."

The foreman permitted no expression of surprise or displeasure to