Free John Ermine of the Yellowstone by Frederic Remington Page B

plenty of time for that, since he
could kill elk within a mile of his door with which to maintain himself. He would begin.
    “Yes, you must work hard with me now to speak as the white men do. You will soon be a man; you are no longer a boy. You are a white man, but you were brought up by the Absaroke, and you
will go back to your own people some day. The more you see them, the better you will like them.”
    “Why must I go to the white people, father? You do not go to them, and you are a white man.”
    The hunchback hermit leaned with his head on his hands for a long time; he had not foreseen this. Finally, “You will go because they are your own people; you will join them when they fight
the Sioux. You think there are not many of them. Weasel, I am not a liar, and I say there are more white men on the earth than there are buffalo. You are young, you are brave, and you are straight
in the back; their hearts will warm toward you. You will grow to be a white chief and own many wagons of coffee and sugar. Some day, Weasel, you will want a white woman for a wife. You have never
seen a white woman; they are not like these red squaws; they are as beautiful as the morning, and some day one of them will build a fire in your heart which nothing but death can put out.
    “From now on I shall no longer call you White Weasel, but will give you a white name which you must answer to. There shall be no Indian mystery about it, and you shall bear it all your
life. I will call you”—and here the hermit again relapsed into thought.
    “I will call you John Ermine; that is a good strong white name, and when you are asked what it is, do not say White Weasel—say, ‘My name is John Ermine.’ Now say
it!” And the young man ran the thing over his tongue like a treble drag on a snare-drum.
    “Now again, after me: ‘My—name—is—John Ermine.’” And the prophet cut the words apart with his forefinger.
    John Ermine tried his name again and again, together with other simple expressions. The hermit ceased almost to address him in the Indian tongue. The broad forehead responded promptly to the
strain put upon it. Before the snow came, the two had rarely to use the harsh language of the tribesmen. Gradually the pressure was increased, and besides words the hermit imposed ideas. These took
root and grew in an alarming way after battling strenuously with those he had imbibed during his youth.
    “And why is your name Crooked-Bear, which is Indian, while you are white?”
    “My name is not Crooked-Bear except to the Indians; my name is Richard Livingston Merril, though I have not heard the sound of it in many snows and do not care to hear it in many more. You
can call me ‘Comrade’; that is my name when you speak.”
    Sitting by their cabin door in the flecked sunlight which the pine trees distributed, the two waded carefully across the lines of some well-thumbed book, taking many perilous flying leaps over
the difficult words, but going swiftly along where it was unseasoned Saxon. The prophet longed for a paper and pencil to accelerate the speed, but was forced to content himself with a sharp stick
and the smoothed-out dirt before him. At times he sprinkled his sensitive plant with some simple arithmetic; again he lectured on the earth, the moon, and the stars. John Ermine did not leave a
flat earth for a round one without a struggle, but the tutor ended up by carving a wooden ball which he balanced in his hand as he separated the sea from the land; he averred that he had known many
men who had been entirely around it—which statement could not be disputed.
    White Weasel had heard the men speak about the talking-wire and fire-wagon, but he did not believe the tales. John Ermine had more faith, although it puzzled him sorely. Raptly he listened to
the long accounts of the many marvels back in the States, and his little Sioux scalp took a new significance as he tried hard to comprehend ten thousand men dying in a single