Pointing to the trail stretching ahead of them like an endless brown
ribbon over prairie and through bush, he said: "I suppose trails are the
oldest things in America. Once thoroughly made they can never be
effaced--except by the plough. You see, they never can run quite
straight, though the country may be as flat as your hand, but the width
never varies; three and a half hands."

Travelling with horses is not all picnicking. Three times a day they
have to be unpacked and turned out to _graze_, and three times _caught_
and _packed again_; this in addition to the regular camp routine of
pitching tents, rustling wood, cooking, etc. Clare announced her
intention of taking over the cooking, but she found that baking biscuits
over an open fire in a drizzle of rain, offered a new set of problems to
the civilized cook, and Mary had to come to her rescue.

During this, their first spell by the trail, Stonor was highly amused to
watch Clare's way with Mary. She simply ignored Mary's discouraging
red-skin stolidity, and assumed that they were sisters under their
skins. She pretended that it was necessary for them to take sides
against Stonor in order to keep the man in his place. It was not long
before Mary was grinning broadly. Finally at some low-voiced sally of
Clare's she laughed outright. Stonor had never heard her laugh before.
Thereafter she was Clare's. Realizing that the wonderful white girl
really wished to make friends, Mary offered her a doglike devotion that
never faltered throughout the difficult days that followed.

They slept throughout the middle part of the day, and later, the sky
clearing, they rode until near sun-down in order to make a good
water-hole that Mary knew of. When they had supped and made all snug for
the night, Stonor let fall the piece of information that Mary was well
known as a teller of tales at the Post. Clare gave her no peace then
till she consented to tell a story. They sat in a row behind Stonor's
little mosquito-bar, for the insects were abroad, with the fire burning
before them, and Mary began.

"I tell you now how the people got the first medicine-pipe. This story
is about Thunder. Thunder is everywhere. He roar in the mountains, he
shout far out on the prairie. He strike the high rocks and they fall. He
hit a tree and split it like with a big axe. He strike people and they
die. He is bad. He like to strike down the tall things that stand. He is
ver' powerful. He is the most stron