Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 148: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

136 An Indian Brave. keeping with the blinking fires and the dusky fig- ures seen moving among them, the conical, deco- rated tepees and the strange scene he had just left at the Indian graveyard. Cuthbert was thrilled with the weirdness sur- rounding him. A little of it went a great way. If he had ever been foolish enough to express a desire to spend some time in an Indian village he regretted it now, and was ready to repent. Fis one wish now was to see Sunset Ranch again, and dear old Karl. He believed he would starve under such cooking as prevailed among the Sioux—true, they had some frying pans and tin kettles, purchased from the set- tlers with whom they traded pelts, buffalo heads and robes, but the trouble was they failed to use them—a chunk of meat thrust into the fire from the end of a prong of wood answered when there was nothing to boil in the black pot. . So he resolved to do his own cooking in the fu- ture, that is, providing the good dame of the chief's household permitted. Some more diplomacy on his part was needed in order to conciliate the squaw, lest she take offense, womanlike, because her guest failed to appreciate her cooking, for even a poor Sioux housekeeper may have her ideas upon the superiority of her corn- bread over that of her dark-skinned sisters. It was a feather in his cap that he even accom- plished this delicate job. Standing Elk viewed the whole arrangement with considerable astonishment. Perhaps he was learning for the first time in his benighted life that there may be other ways to in- fluence the wife of one’s bosom to do one’s will save that time-honored one of knocking her down first. And his admiration for the lad increased, since he ConniclooOokks.€c©