It lodged in one of the giant sage-brushes which grew some little distance away on the outer edge of the dooryard, and into this brush Ralston reached and carefully drew it forth. He looked at it again, lest his eyes had deceived him, then he passed it to Susie, who stared blankly from the scrap of paper to him. XIX WHEN THE CLOUDS PLAYED WOLF The Indian woman was restless; she had been so from the time they had lost sight of the town, but her restlessness had increased as the daylight faded and night fell. "You're goin' to bust this seat in if you don't quit jammin' around," Meeteetse Ed warned her peevishly. Meeteetse was irritable, a state due largely to the waning exhilaration of a short and unsatisfactory spree. The woman clucked at the horses, and, to the great annoyance of her driver, reached for the reins and slapped them on the back. "They're about played out," he growled. "Forty miles is a awful trip for these buzzard-heads to make in a day. We orter have put up some'eres overnight." "I could have stayed with Little Coyote's woman." "We orter have done it, too. Look at them cayuses stumblin' along! Say, we won't git in before 'leven or twelve at this gait, and I'm so hungry I don't know where I'm goin' to sleep to-night." "Little Coyote's woman gifted me some sa'vis berries." "Aw, sa'vis berries! I can't go sa'vis berries," growled Meeteetse. "They're too sweet. The only way they're fit to eat is to dry 'em and pound 'em up with jerked elk--then they ain't bad eatin'. I've et 'most ev'ry thing in my day. I've et wolf, and dog, and old mountain billy-goat, and bull-snakes, and grasshoppers, so you kin see I ain't finnicky, but I can't stummick sa'vis berries." He asked querulously: "What's ailin' of you?" The Indian woman, who had been studying the black clouds as they drifted across the sky to dim the starlight, said in a half-whisper: "The clouds no look good to me. They look like enemies playin' wolf. I feel as if somethin' goin' happen." The bare suggestion of the supernatural was sufficient to alarm Meeteetse. He asked in a startled voice: "How do you feel?" "I feel sad. My heart drags down to de ground, and it seem like de dark hide somethin'." Meeteetse elongated his neck and peered fearfully into the darkness. "What do you think it hides?" he asked in a husky whisper. She shook her head. "I don't know, but I have de bad feelin'." "I forgot to sleep with my feet crossed last night," said Meeteetse, "and I dreamed horrible dreams all night long. Maybe they was warnin's. I can't think of anything much that could happen to us though," he went on, having forgotten some of his ill-nature in his alarm for his personal safety. "These here horses ain't goin' to run away--I wisht they would, fer 't would git us quite a piece on our road. We ain't no enemies worth mentionin', and we ain't worth stealin', so I don't hardly think your feelin' means any wrong for us. More'n likely it's jest somebody dead."