Today they had brought her the tomato can only half full. Such a little drink! And her mouth was so hot and dry! They were starving her to death--had been starving her for days and days. Oh, yes! she knew what they were doing. She knew why they were doing it, too. It was because she was in the way. She was an old squaw. For weeks she had been half dead; she had lain for weeks whimpering and moaning in a corner of the camp on a heap of refuse and rotting rags, where they had first shoved her aside when she could no longer gather herself up on her withered limbs and go about to wait upon herself. They had cursed her for her uselessness; and had let the children throw dirt at her, and take her scant share of food away and give it to the dogs. Then they had laughed at her when one of the older grandchildren had spat at her; and when she had striven to strike at the mocking, devilish face, and in her feebleness had failed, they had but laughed the louder while she shrieked out in her hatred of them all. Her children, and her children’s children--her flesh and bone! They were young, and well, and strong; and she was old, feeble and dying. Old--old--old! Too old to work. Too old to do for herself any longer, they were tired of her; and now they had put her out of the wick-i-up to die alone there by the stone wall. She knew it--knew the truth; but what could she do? She was only an old Paiute squaw. At first they had given her half the amount of food which they allowed her before she had grown so feeble. Then it was but a quarter; and then again it was divided in half. Now--at the last--they were bringing her only water. One day when she was faint and almost crazed from hunger, one of the boys (her own son’s son) had come with a meat bone and thrown it down before her; but when she reached out with trembling, fleshless hands to grasp it, he had jerked at the string to which it was tied, and snatched it away. Again and again he threw it toward her; again and again she tried to be quick enough to close her fingers upon it before he could jerk it from her. Then (when, at last, he was tired of the play) he had flung it only an arm’s length beyond her reach, and had run laughing down to the railroad to beg nickels from the passengers on the train. When he had gone a dog came and dropped down beside her, and gnawed the bone where it lay. She had crawled out into the sunshine that day, and lay huddled in a heap close to the door-flap at the wick-i-up entrance. The warm sunlight at first felt good to her chilled blood, and she had lain there long; but finally when she would have dragged her feeble body within again, a young squaw (the one who had mated with the firstborn son, and was now ruler of the camp) had thrust her back with her foot, and said that her whining and crying were making the Great Spirit angry; and that henceforth she must stay outside the camp, for a punishment.