Our own dead were removed to the edge of the bluff; and so
more headstones, simple and rude, went to line the great pathway into
the West.
Again Ellen Meriwether came and sat by me. She had now removed the gray
traveling gown, for reasons which I could guess, and her costume might
have been taken from a collector's chest rather than a woman's wardrobe.
All at once we seemed, all of us, to be blending with these
surroundings, becoming savage as these other savages. It might almost
have been a savage woman who came to me.
Her skirt was short; made of white tanned antelope leather. Above it
fell the ragged edges of a native tunic or shirt of yellow buck,
ornamented with elk teeth, embroidered in stained quills. Her feet still
wore a white woman's shoes, although the short skirt was enforced by
native leggins, beaded and becylindered in metals so that she tinkled as
the walked. Her hair, now becoming yellower and more sunburned at the
ends, was piled under her felt hat, and the modishness of long
cylindrical curls was quite forgot. The brown of her cheeks, already
strongly sunburned, showed in strange contrast to the snowy white of her
neck, now exposed by the low neck aperture of the Indian tunic.
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