The odor of the
buming fat was delicious, and the gentle patter
of the rain made a weird music outside their
wigwam.
As soon as her husband had left her alone
--for he must go to water the ponies and con-
ceal them at a distance--Stasu came out to
collect more wood. Instinctively she looked all
about her. Huge mountains towered skyward,
clad in pines. The narrow valley in which she
was wound its way between them, and on every
side there was heavy forest.
She stood silent and awed, scarcely able to
realize that she had begun her new life abso-
lutely alone, with no other woman to advise
or congratulate her, and visited only by the
birds of the air. Yet all the world to her just
now was Antelope! No other woman could
smile on him. He could not talk to any one
but her. The evening drum at the council
lodge could not summon him away from her,
and she was well content.
When the young wife had done everything
she could think of in preparation for her hus-
band's return, including the making of several
birch-bark basins and pails for water, the rain
had quite ceased, so she spread her robe just
outside the lodge and took up her work-bag, in
which she had several pairs of moccasin-tops
already beaded.
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