Читать книгу Dusty Star - Olaf Baker - Страница 11

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After this stormy introduction to the camp, the family settled down quietly enough. Running Wolf's long absence from the tribe had made no difference to his membership or position in it. Half-an-hour after his arrival, his tepee was set up in the place appointed for it by the head chief, and in two days' time the family were living the life of the camp as if they had never left it. To be quite truthful, Running Wolf, Nikana, and Blue Wings were living it. With Dusty Star it was different. The number of people of all ages, from newly-born papooses, up to braves and old squaws—some of them so wrinkled and bony that it almost seemed as if they had forgotten to be dead; the constant coming and going, the pony-racing, the chanting of medicine songs and the beating of drums;—all these things were so utterly strange and bewildering that, after the long day's experiences, he was almost too excited to sleep.

As for Kiopo, if an animal could have spent the whole of its puppyhood in the moon, and then, one slippery night, have all at once fallen off into the middle of the earth, it could not possibly have felt more an unwelcome intruder than Kiopo in his new surroundings. The fact of his arrival was now known to every husky in the camp, and each husky hated him from the bottom of his husky heart. For the most part they lived on the worst possible terms with each other. This individual dislike did not stand in the way of a combined attack upon a common enemy when opportunity offered. Left to themselves to arrange matters, Kiopo would not have had the ghost of a grasshopper's chance. There were two great obstacles to his immediate destruction. One was his owner, Dusty Star, who kept a pile of stones and a heavy stick, always ready for instant use; and the other was Kiopo himself.