Roy Norton

“ White men and bucks began to make the circle of the squaws and klootches squatted on the floor in their ludicrous finery, fashioned after the few white women's costumes they had seen, and soon there were eight couples waiting for the music to begin.
“By golly! I didn't see you come in!” Singer exclaimed, discovering us, and hurried over to shake our hands. “Pretty nice of you to come, Tom. Never saw you go to no dance before. Ellen! Oh, Ellen! Why don't you git up, and come and shake hands with your guests?” ”

“ Suddenly an old squaw at the side of the room leaped to her feet, and shrilled: “Ah-h-h-h!” Others sprang up, and drew back against the wall. The other couples stopped, but Royce and the Big Chicken went dizzily on, and the sound was more audible in the silence that seemed to have stopped other sound. All around me natives were straining forward, and, following their direction, I, too, looked. ”

“ He had been a whaler, and in his youth was probably a hardy customer in a rough-and-tumble fight; but his youth had gone, and nothing save his valor and conviction that a man should be master of his own house remained. ”

“ Big squaw dance over across the river to-night. Some kin folks of old Singer has come down from up above. Say, come on, go over. It'd please the old man a whole lot, and you'll see the real swell Taninaw society there a-shakin' its light fantastic feet. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. I believe that uncommunicative men suffer more than others. I sometimes felt in the week following the discovery that Elizabeth Wilton and Kentucky loved each other, that if I could only find words to tell Dan, I should feel better; for I knew that he surmised that something had gone amiss, for he ceased mentioning trips to the camp, or Bessie. ”

“ The noise was coming almost entirely from the white men who were participating, and the natives sat stolidly on the floor at the foot of the wall around the room. Some of them grinned laboriously in an effort to adopt the white man's expression of enjoyment, and Singer himself was just calling “partners for a square dance.” ”

“ I think we should have done so had not some of the natives by the wall begun one of their weird songs, called the “Song of the Canoe,” and they interested us, as they sat there swaying their bodies sidewise, and chanting in a monotonous voice. Others joined in, until the whole side of the room seemed bending in that almost hypnotic regularity of motion. ”