Newspaper Page Text
THE FUTURE CIliZEN.
*»*•* •
r
~ ■r..--n=g^=!.r J -a. = iF■ lf=
RED BIRD’S
-— .-,1—... ---a 5 ,
ADVENTURE
EB ass.”—lF=H=j
\s
IN
L
By F. W. Calks
■ r="" =>g=
In The Youth’s Companion
g=i^ir=ac=ir--i gp J|
Virginia Red Bird —or Red
Bird, as she prefere.d to be called—
is a talented Sioux girl whose life
was divided between attending a
.mission school at the agency, and
in living with her mother—in a
tepee in summer.
Since the fighting days of our
Indians are over and the big game
has vanished their life has become
tame and uninteresting enougli to
the older ones. Red Bird knew
nothing of war or of the buffalo
chase, save by hearsay. Yet she
had one most exciting adventure,
which she was persuaded to tell
when l was recently at her home
reservation.
When she was nine summers old
her older brother gave her a little
yellow coyote, which he had picked
up, abandoned in the flight of its
dam, near th2 agency roadside.
The baby coyote was but a day or
two old, a wriggling, spawling,
weakly thing, yet Red Bird suc
ceeded in rearing it “by hand,”
and the little animal became
thoroughly domesticated and much
attached to her. In house or tepee
the coyote had its bed upon a corn-
husk mat close to its mistress’s
couch.
As Red Bird had no brothers or
sisters at home, “Yikyak,” the
coyote, served most of her needs
for companionship. Save w! en the
little Indian girl attended day-
school, she and her pet were seldom
long apart.
For two years they were thus
comrades and piay mates, and then
Red Bird came home from school
one spring evening to find Yiayak
missing. In vain she hunted for
her pet, and ran calling among the
Agency buildings and up and
down the river batik. She came at
last to the conclusion that some
hunter had shot Yikyok on the
prairie.
Several weeks passed. The mis
sion school closed for the summer
vacation and the Missouri wa»
roaring with a tremendous flood
coining down from the mountains.
j One ho^ afternoon while the
flood was at its height, Red Bird’s
mother lay sleeping in the tepee.
All was silent save the dull thunder
of the river, when Red Bird, busy
with peeling and eating Teep
Sinna, heard a familiar yip-yap
ping, shrill and inquiring, some
where out on the prairie.
She ran out of the tepee,* but
could see nothing of her barking
coyote. Yi-yi-yi-yap! It sounded
up the river, and the Sioux girl
sped in that direction.
At the end of a half mile run
she reached the rim of a small knoll;
some fifty yards beyond sat her
own Yikyak, answering her calls
with occasional yappings. With a
joyful shout Red Bird ran towards
her long lost pet. Yikyak sat de
murely waiting until the girl was
within a few yards, and then she
trotted swiftly away up the river.
In vain Red Bird called and
called, and even scolded and stamp
ed her feet to emphasize her com
mands, The coyote stopped going
only when her mistress stopped,
and then only long enough to look
back at Red Bird with anxious
inquiry.
On trudged little Red Bird, un
mindful of the miles behind her.
Some tears of vexation she shed,
but hope buoyed her up and she
did not know how tired she was
when Yikyak halted upon a bluff
bank of the river far away from
any houses.
Panting and eager, Red Bird
was about to lay hands upon the
obstinate runner when the coyote
slipped suddenly over the high
bank, and scrambling and sliding
down a steep path, disappeared
quiie as if she had fallin into the
tumbling, muddy current far below.
For a time Red Bird watched
and listened for some sign of her
pet; then, advancing her tnoccasin-
ed feet cautiously and clinging to
| rough places with her h tnds, she
I let herself down. Presently she
I readied a “jumping off place” and
'again peered below.
She was in time to see Yikyak
coming out of the mouth of a ewe
hole and, wonder of wonders!
bearing in her jaws a woolly,
squirming likeness of herself.
“ VV hi ! mi Yikyak win !” shouted
Red Bird, joyfully.
Regardless of the danger of a
caving bank, she dropped down
upon the coyote’s narrow perch
and pounced upon the beautiful
kit. Behind Yikyak, peeping out
at the mouth of her den, were the
pointed noses and pricked ears nl
three more of the little ones.
The delight of the Sioux girl
was boundless. She wanted to
gather all these fluffy babies into
her arms at once She leaned for
ward eagerly, crowding the coyote
mother to get at her young ones.
The;: something happened which
startled the girl and opened her
hitherto unseeing eyes to the dan
ger of her situation. The earth
gave way beneath her free hand,
and a good sized slice ol the bank
caved off and fell with a rattling
splash into the current
Red Bird was thrown upon her
face and recovered her footing with
difficulty, while the coyote scrumb
led, with a whine of anxiety, into
her shallow den.
Red Bird now saw with affright
what she had missed in her excittil
pursuit, that the bluff bank was
being rapidly worn away by the
flood which tumbled against it
twenty or thirty feet below, that a
great slice had already fallen in a
landslide and had been washed
away by the swift current.
The little ridge of earth on which
the Indian girl stood was, in fact,
already deeply under mined by the
eating current, and might give way
j at any moment.
She saw that Yikyak’s hole had
been split off,—if a hole may he
said to be split , —and a shallow
pit remained suspended like u
shattered nest in the heart of a
riven tree. The caving sect ton had
left a narrow hummock ot clav
f J
/ ,
(Continued on page 6. column 1.)
lao fou imagine A Time When T|u» Future Citire* Will A THnur of Th# Pait
