Lawson admitted that it made him impatient when a man like Parker opened his mouth on things he knew nothing about. "You never can tell what your best friend will do, can you? Parker is decidedly fresh. If he keeps on he'll become tiresome." Elsie presumed on her enormous experience of three months on the reservation, and gave Parker many valuable hints of how to wheedle the Tetongs in personal contact. "It seems I'm being schooled," he complained. "You need it," was Lawson's disconcerting reply. As night fell, and the fire began to glow in the cool, sweet dark with increasing power, they all sat round the flame and planned the trip into the mountains. "I have some Tetongs up there who are disposed to keep very clear of the agency. Red Wolf is their head man. You may all go with me and see my council with him if you like." "Oh! that will be glorious fun!" cried Elsie. But Parker asked, a little anxiously, "You think it safe?" which amused Curtis, and Parker hastened to explain: "You've no idea what a bad reputation these Tetongs have. Anyhow, I would not feel justified in taking Mrs. Parker into any danger." "She is quite safe," replied Curtis. "I will answer for the action of my wards." "Well, if you are quite sure!" "How far away Washington seems now!" remarked Elsie, after a silence. "I feel as if I had gone back to the very beginning of things." "It seems the end of things for the Tetongs," replied Lawson. "We forget that fact sometimes when we are anxious to have them change to our ways. Barring out a few rudenesses, their old life was a beautiful adaptation of organism to environment. Isn't that so, Curtis?" "It certainly had its idyllic side." "But they must have been worried to death for fear of getting scalped," said Parker. "Oh, they didn't war much till the white man came to disturb them, by crowding one tribe into another tribe's territory. Their 'wars' were small affairs--hardly more than skirmishes. That they were infrequent is evident from the importance given small forays in their 'winter counts.'" One by one the campers began to yawn, and Jennie and Mrs. Parker withdrew into the tent reserved for the women, but Lawson and Elsie and Curtis still remained about the fire. The girl's eyes were wide with excitement. "Isn't it delicious to be a little speck of life in this limitless world of darkness? Osborne, why didn't we camp last year?" "I proposed it, but Mattie would not hear to it. I have a notion that you also put my suggestion aside with scorn." She protested that he was mistaken. "It is the only way to get close to these wild people. I begin to understand them as I sit here beside this fire. What do you suppose Two Horns is thinking about as he sits over there smoking?" As they talked, Lawson began to yawn also, and at last said: "Elsie Bee Bee, I am sleepy, and I know Curtis is."