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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