Late that afternoon it began to rain. By the time we made camp at dusk everything was dismal and irritating to the nerves. Evidently, too, a real tempest was brewing. The ethnologist, who had bought a lining for the tent, proposed slipping it in under the tent poles. While we were discussing how best to do this, Wajapa made some remark which led the lady to comment impulsively: "You speak to us as if we were children."

I saw Wajapa's face change. When I looked up from my task a moment later he was gone.

Outside the tent the rain beat down in torrents. The wind, unhindered for hundreds of miles, came howling across the prairie. The sky hung inky black. Once I slipped out of the tent for a moment to look around and listen from the shelter of a wagon. A lightning flash lit up the world — and there, some fifty yards from the tent and near our huddled herd of horses, stood Wajapa in the dumps, motionless as a rock, taking the full lashing of the storm. Two hours later he came into the tent, wet to the skin, sat a few minutes by the fire, and then without a word wrapped himself in a buffalo robe. In three minutes he was asleep.

Under all these circumstances I was thankful that I already had met one pressing problem of that day more tactfully than the Highflyer had met hers, but, unlike her, I had known the Indian mind from long personal experience.

Thomas Henry Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days, page 256