Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/21

 news. All our people came to receive their chieftain; all the old and young men and their wives went to meet him. One evening there came a man, saying that all the women who had little children should go to a high mountain. They wanted them to go because they brought white men’s guns, and they made such a fearful noise, it might even kill some of the little children. My grandfather had lost one of his men while he was away.

So all the women that had little children went. My mother was among the rest; and every time the guns were heard by us, the children would scream. I thought, for one that my heart would surely break. So some of the women went down from the mountain and told them not to shoot any more, or their children would die with fright. When our mothers brought us down to our homes the nearer we came to the camp, the more I cried,—

“Oh, mother, mother, don’t take us there!” I fought my mother, I bit her. Then my father came, and took me in his arms and carried me to the camp. I put my head in his bosom, and would not look up for a long time. I heard my grandfather say,—

“So the young lady is ashamed because her sweetheart has come to see her. Come, dearest, that won’t do after I have had such a hard time to come to see my sweetheart, that she should be ashamed to look at me.”

Then he called my two brothers to him, and said to them, “Are you glad to see me?” And my brothers both told him that they were glad to see him. Then my grandfather said to them,—

“See that young lady; she does not love her sweetheart any more, does she? Well, I shall not live if she does not come and tell me she loves me. I shall take that gun, and I shall kill myself.”

That made me worse than ever, and I screamed and