"
"And did no one hear you?"
"Yes. In the night I heard a noise in the wood, and it was the noise of
a man walking, an Indian man, for it was soft, made by moccasins. Then I
cried louder, and soon my father came and picked both me and my mother
up in his arms and carried us away into the woods, where he buried my
mother, and went away into the North again.
"But as I grew up, I thought often about the mother gold and the place
where it was hidden by the Great Spirit, for so I had heard my father
say. Once when I spoke of it to my father he told me never to speak of
it to him again, for it was cursed, having taken away from him his son,
who was killed by the white men, and my mother.
"So never did I talk of it. But when Running Bear heard of it from some
of the old men who had been with my father, and heard that I was the
only one of all the tribe who knew where it was, he began to court me,
and then bought me of my father for twenty ponies.
"We had not been married long when he asked me to take him to the place
of gold, but my father told me not to do so, and I did not. Then he
began to beat me, and tried to kill me, but the secret is still mine.
"In time others heard that I possessed the great secret of the hiding
place of the mother gold, for when Running Bear was drunk he would boast
that his squaw was the richest woman in the world, because of her
secret, and many men have tried to get it from me.
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