Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/124

 My father sat a long time without saying a word.

At last Mr. Parrish said:—

“Come with me, Winnemucca, I want to give you some things. Come with me.” So we went to our store-house. After we got there father stood in one corner of the room, like one that was lost.

Mr. Parrish said, “What kind of clothes do you want?”

Father said, “I don’t want anything if you are not going to stay with me. I don’t want anything from you, because it will make me feel so badly after you are gone.”

It is the way we Indians do. We never keep anything belonging to our dearest friends, because it makes us feel so badly, and when any of our family die, everything belonging to them is buried, and their horses are killed. When my poor mother was yet living every time we went near the place where my poor grandfather was buried she would weep. I told father the way white people did if they were to part for a long time was to give each other something to remember each other by, and they would also keep another’s picture, if he was dead. “Father,” I said, “you had better take what he gives you, for he will feel badly if you don’t.” So father took everything he gave him, and the next morning, father, Egan, Oytes, and myself started for Camp Harney, to see the officer there. We arrived at Camp Harney, distant fifty miles, at about five o’clock. We rode up to the commanding officer’s quarters, and I said:—

“Major Green, my father has come to see you, and to have a talk with you.” “Well, Sarah, tell your father to come at ten o’clock to-morrow. Have you a place to stop at while you are here?” I said, “Yes, I have a lady friend here. Father and I can stop with her.”

“And where will those two men stop?”

I said, “I don’t know.” “But, let me see,” he said,