ollowing his narratives I had found myself able to
reproduce the spirit of them in my own diction. His ability as a
sign-talker was of especial service to me for, as he signed to his
visitors, he muttered aloud, for my benefit, what he was expressing in
gesture, and also what the red man signed in reply. In this way I got at
the psychology of the Cheyenne to a degree which I could not possibly
compass through an interpreter.

While looking for farms during the day, I drew from Seger night by
night, the amazing story of his career among the Southern Cheyennes. It
was a rough and disjointed narrative, but it was stirring and valuable
as authentic record of the Southwest. "The Red Pioneer," "Lone Wolf's
Old Guard," and many more of my tales of red people were secured on this
trip. Several dealing with the Blackfeet and Northern Cheyennes, like
"the Faith of His Fathers" and "White Weasel" I gained from Stouch. None
of them are true in the sense of being precisely the way they were told,
for I took very few notes. They are rather free transcripts of the
incidents which chanced to follow my liking--but they reflect the spirit
of the original narratives and are bound together by one underlying
motive which is to show the Indian as a human being, a neighbor. "We
have had plenty of the 'wily redskin' kind of thing," I said to Stouch.
"I am going to tell of the red man as you and Seger have known him, as a
man of the polished stone age trying to adapt himself to steam and
electricity."

It happened that plenteous rains had made Oklahoma very green and
beautiful, and as I galloped about over the wide swells of the Caddo
country, I was disposed to buy all the land that joined me. Imagining
myself the lord of a thousand acres, I achieved a profound joy of
living. It was good to glow in the sunlight, to face the sweet southern
wind, and to feel once more beneath my knees the swelling muscles of a
powerful horse. In a very vivid sense I relived the days when, as a lad
of twelve, I rode with Burton and my sister Harriet along the prairie
swells of the Cedar Valley some thirty years before. "Washitay," at such
moments was not only the land of the past but the hope of the future.

My red neighbors interested me. The whole problem of their future was
being worked out almost within sight of my door. Here the men of the
Polished Stone Age and the men of gasoline engines and electrical
telephones met and mingled in a daily adjustment whic