that?"

"I should say they did. There ain't any way they didn't turn and twist
the teepee for comfort. That's what makes it so good. Ye kin live in
it forty below zero an' fifty 'bove suffocation an' still be happy.
It's the changeablest kind of a layout for livin' in. Real hot weather
the thing looks like a spider with skirts on and held high, an' I tell
you ye got to know the weather for a teepee. Many a hot night on the
plains I've been woke up by hearing 'Tap-tap-tap' all around me in the
still black night and wondered why all the squaws was working, but
they was up to drop the cover and drive all the pegs deeper, an'
within a half hour there never failed to come up a big storm. How they
knew it was a-comin' I never could tell. One old woman said a Coyote
told her, an' maybe that's true, for they do change their song for
trouble ahead; another said it was the flowers lookin' queer at
sundown, an' another had a bad dream. Maybe they're all true; it comes
o' watchin' little things."

"Do they never get fooled?" asked Little Beaver

'Oncet in awhile, but not near as often as a White-man would.

"I mind once seeing an artist chap, one of them there portygraf
takers. He come out to the village with a machine an' took some of the
little teepees. Then I said, 'Why don't you get Bull-calf's squaw to
put up their big teepee? I tell you that's a howler.' So off he goes,
and after dickering awhile he got the squaw to put it up for three
dollars. You bet it was a stunner, sure--all painted red, with green
an' yaller--animals an' birds an' scalps galore. It made that
feller's eyes bug out to see it. He started in to make some
portygrafs, then was taking another by hand, so as to get the colours,
an' I bet it would have crowded him to do it, but jest when he got
a-going the old squaw yelled to the other--the Chief hed two of
them--an' lighted out to take down that there teepee. That artist he
hollered to stop, said he had hired it to stay up an' a bargain was a
bargain. But the old squaw she jest kept on a-jabberin' an' pintin' at
the west. Pretty soon they had the hull thing down and rolled up an'
that artist a-cussin' like a cow-puncher. Well, I mind it was a fine
day, but awful hot, an' before five minutes there come a little dark
cloud in the west, then in ten minutes come a-whoopin' a regular small
cyclone, an' it went through that village and wrecked all the teepees
of any size. That red one would surely have gone only