In another, "The Dancing Woman" is wrapped in her blanket pretending to
go to sleep. In vain does "The Flying Cloud" play that monotonous
courting tune on the flute. The maiden would not be his wife if he gave
her all the trinkets in the world. She loves and is going to marry "Iron
Lightning," who has gone to bring her--what? a brooch--a new blanket?
no, a Chippeway's scalp, that she may be the most graceful of those who
dance around it. Her mother is mending the mocassins of the old man who
sleeps before the fire.
And we might go round the village and find every family differently
employed. They have no regular hours for eating or sleeping. In front of
the teepees, young men are lying on the ground, lazily playing checkers,
while their wives and sisters are cutting wood and engaged in laborious
household duties.
I said Good Road had two wives, and I would now observe that neither of
them is younger than himself. But they are as jealous of each other as
if they had just turned seventeen, and their lord and master were twenty
instead of fifty. Not a day passes that they do not quarrel, and fight
too.
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