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TIMID HARE

The Little Captive

by

MARY H. WADE

Author of "Little Cousin Series", etc.

Illustrated by Louis Betts

Whitman Publishing Co.
Racine -- Chicago

1916







[Illustration: Cover Art]


[Frontispiece: Buffalo Rib was a Handsome Youth.]



CONTENTS

  CAPTURED
  BEFORE THE CHIEF
  THE NEW HOME
  HARD WORK
  THE CHANGE
  THE VISIT
  THE MISCHIEF MAKER
  THE HAPPY DAY
  THE DOG FEAST
  THE FESTIVAL
  MOVING DAY
  THE JOURNEY
  THE MEDICINE MAN
  THE WINTER HUNT




List of Color Plates


   Buffalo Rib Was a Handsome Youth

   The Stone and Her Son Black Bull Were Hurrying Home

   "Sweet Grass, Listen to Me"  [Missing from book]

   "I Soon Had a Fire Started"

   Black Bull Was Helpless

   Bent Horn's Mind Was Made Up

   They Looked With Wonder at the Medicine Man

   "Help Me, Great Spirit"  [Missing from book]






CAPTURED

Swift Fawn sat motionless on the river-bank.

"Lap, lap," sang the tiny waves as they struck the shore.  "Lap, lap,"
they kept repeating, but the little girl did not heed the soft music.
Her mind was too busy with the story White Mink had told her that
morning.

After the men had started off on a buffalo hunt Swift Fawn had left the
other children to their games in the village and stolen away to the
favorite bathing place of the women-folk.

"No one will disturb me there," she had said to herself, "and I want to
be all by myself to think it over."

After she had been there for sometime.  Swift Fawn drew out from the
folds of her deerskin jacket a baby's sock, and turned it over and over
in her hands curiously.  Never had she seen the like of it before.  How
pretty it was!  Who could have had the skill to weave the threads of
scarlet silk in and out of the soft wool in such a dainty pattern?  Was
it--the child whispered the word--could it have been her mother?

White Mink had always been so good to her, Surely no real mother could
have been more loving than the Indian woman who had watched over her
and tended her, and taught her from the time when Three Bears had
brought her, a year-old baby, to his wife.  Where he found the little
one, he had never told.

And so she was a white child.  How strange it was!  Yet she had grown
up into a big girl, loving the ways of the red people more and more
deeply for eight happy years.

"Surely," thought the child, "I could not have loved my own parents
more than I do White Mink and Three Bears."

"I wish--oh, so hard!" she added with a lump in her throat, "that White
Mink had not told me.  I don't want to remember there ever
was--something different."

With these last words Swift Fawn lifted the little sock and was about
to hurl it into the water, when she suddenly stopped as she remembered
White Mink's last words.

"I give this shoe into your keeping," the woman had said solemnly.  "I
have spoken because of my dream last night, and because of its warning
I bid you keep the shoe always."

With a little sigh, Swift Fawn drew back from the edge of the stream
and replaced the shoe in the bosom of her jacket.  Then she stretched
herself out on the grassy bank and lay looking up into the blue sky
overhead.  How beautiful it was!  How gracefully the clouds floated by!
One took on the shape of a buffalo with big horns and head bent down as
if to charge.  But it was so far away and dreamlike it was not fearful
to the child.  And now it changed; the horns disappeared; the body
became smaller, and folded wings appeared at the sides; it was now, in
Swift Fawn's thoughts, a graceful swan sailing, onward, onward, in the
sky-world overhead.

The little girl's eyes winked and blinked and at last closed tightly.
She had left the prairie behind her and entered the Land of Nod.

She must have slept a long time, for when she awoke the sun had set,
and in the gathering darkness, she was aware of a man's face with
fierce dark eyes bent over her own.

"Ugh!  Ugh!" the man was muttering.  "It is a daughter of the Mandans.
A good prize!"

As he spoke he rose to his feet and Swift Fawn, shaking with fear, knew
that he was beckoning to others to draw near.  A moment afterwards she
was surrounded by a party of warriors.  They were taller than the men
of her own tribe, and were straight and noble in shape, but their faces
were very stern.

"They must belong to the 'Dahcotas,'" thought the child.  "And they are
our enemies."

Many a tale had Swift Fawn heard of the fierce Dahcotas, lovers of war
and greatly to be feared.  It was a terrible thought that she was alone
and in their power, with the night coming on.

"Ugh!  What shall we do with her?" the brave who had discovered her
said to the others.

"She is fair to