He was often seen eating fish when others could find no fish.
It was certain that the Old One knew the languages of many tribes; it might be that he knew the language of fish and birds as well, or the language of wolves. Buffalo Hump neither believed the stories nor disbelieved them.
He was not a man who felt that he always knew the truth of things. He liked to watch and listen. A man such as the Old One must know things that other people had forgotten. It might be that the Old One had stumbled on the spring of life and could not die, but was that good? In life was much pain; what man would want to bear it forever? Besides, any man who was curious would want at last to enter the mystery, to walk the plains of the spirit land. Buffalo Hump was in no hurry to have his own life end, and yet the knowledge that it would end someday and that he would go to where the spirits were brought a kind of peace, after struggles and warfare and wounds and the quarrels of women.
And yet, what he had noticed the few times he had come across the Old One was that he seemed to be a cheerful man, and practical. His first request was always for tobacco, and so it was now.
'Those are fine quills you are taking from that porcupine,' Buffalo Hump said, once he had dismounted at the Old One's camp.
'Leave off the talk, I'm counting and don't want to lose my count,' Ephaniah said, which amused Buffalo Hump no end. Worm was a long distance back, quivering and trying to make a protective spell of some kind, while the Old One with the long white hair was merely counting the quills of his porcupine.
Buffalo Hump accepted his rebuke and sat quietly by the campfire as the old man plucked out each quill carefully and laid it on the buckskin. He worked with ease and skill; not once, while Buffalo Hump watched, did he break a single quill. Now and then Buffalo Hump turned and gestured for Worm to come to the camp, but Worm was too fearful. Soon the dusk hid him. When darkness filled the sky, with only the small speckle of firelight to interrupt it, the old man put the porcupine aside. He had not been able to finish his work before dark and evidently did not want to jeopardize it by working when the light was poor.
'That's a thousand and one, so far,' Ephaniah said. 'I'm stopping till daylight. Got any tobaccy?' Buffalo Hump had none but Worm had plenty. He had filled several pouches with it during the great raid; once back with the tribe he meant to trade it for a young woman who belonged to old Spotted Bull, a warrior with a great taste for tobacco who was much too decrepit to need the young woman.
'Worm will give you some when he comes to the camp,' Buffalo Hump said. 'Right now he is scared you will witch him so he is staying back.' The Old One, Ephaniah, seemed to be amused by this comment. He cupped his hands around his mouth and produced the howl of a wolf. It was such a good howl that Buffalo Hump himself was startled for a moment--then, from the darkness, there came an answering howl, from the wolf that had trotted away when the two Comanches appeared.
It was only a few minutes later that Worm came into the camp. He did not enjoy being alone by the river with wolves howling all around. He did not want to fall asleep in a place where a wolf might come out of his dream and rip his throat.
Once he discovered that the Old One wanted some of his tobacco, Worm forgot about being witched; since the Old One was their host he had to give him some tobacco, or else be thought a bad guest, but he only offered him the smallest of the many plugs of tobacco he had looted from the Texans. The Old One accepted the plug without comment, but Buffalo Hump frowned.
'If you would be a little more generous the Old One might give us some of these nice porcupine quills,' he said. 'My wives would be pleased if they had such nice quills.' 'You know Spotted Bull,' Worm said.
'He won't give me that woman unless he gets a lot of tobacco.' 'You have enough tobacco to buy five or six women,' Buffalo Hump told him. 'If you can't talk Spotted Bull out of that woman, buy someone else. What you are doing is impolite. If you can't be a better guest than this, you deserve to have the dream wolf come and eat you.' Worm did not enjoy being spoken to so sternly.
Buffalo Hump was a man whose moods were uncertain, and they were still a long way from home.
Worm was torn; he very much wanted the young wife of Spotted Bull, yet he did not want to make an enemy of Buffalo Hump, not while they had such a way to travel. In the end he gave the Old One three more plugs of tobacco.
The old man took them without comment.
In the morning, though, in the clear sunlight, he continued to remove quills from the hide of the porcupine.
Buffalo Hump sat in silence, watching. The great wolf who travelled with the Old One stood on a little bluff to the east. Worm would have liked to ask the Old One a few questions; he wanted particularly to know if the Old One could speak to fish. But Buffalo Hump discouraged him. He did not want the old man to be bothered while he was extracting the porcupine quills.
When the last quill had been coaxed from the porcupine's hide and laid on the little piece of buckskin, the Old One quickly separated about a quarter of the quills and offered them to Buffalo Hump, who nodded in thanks. The Old One then carefully folded the rest of the quills into the buckskin, put them in a little pouch he carried, and then went down to the cold river to wash his face.
While the two Comanches watched he put his head under the water. When he stood up he shook water off his long hair, as a dog might.
'I think he was just talking to the fish people,' Worm said.
'What did he say to them?' Buffalo Hump asked. 'He is an old white man. I think he just likes to wash himself.' Worm was stumped by the question. He had no idea what the Old One might have said to the fish. But he was convinced there was witching involved--witching of some kind. He was also wishing he had not given away so much tobacco. It would tell against him when he began his trade with Spotted Bull.
The second time the young Comanches caught him, Famous Shoes thought it was probably going to be his time to die. He had found his grandmother at a poor little camp near the Arkansas but did not have a very good visit. His grandmother had immediately set in complaining about his grandfather and had kept up her complaining for two days. Every time Famous Shoes tried to get her to consider more important things, such as how the Kickapoo people had come to be, his grandmother grew irritated and brushed aside his question. Everybody knew of course that the Kickapoo people had come out of a hole in the earth at the time when there were only buffalo in the world. The Kickapoo had been chosen by the buffalo to be the first human beings; Father Buffalo himself had pawed open the hole and allowed the Kickapoo to come up from their deep caves.
