"Around his neck he wore a necklace of human bones!"
It was a splendid afternoon. Noble bought them maple sugar, and they ate it all the way back to town, together with black hairs from the bearskin and red mitten-fuzz. Jodie ate so much that he was sick in the night. Kate heard him whooping, and went in to him to hold his hot head, to comfort him. And when he was better she rocked him in her arms until he fell asleep, both of them wrapped in the old silkolene quilt that Lizzie brought, the warmth of his relaxed little body melting her, until her tears fell, quietly, slowly.
The sorrow of Joe's death made a new trouble almost unimportant, at first. All the money Joe had put into the Thunder Bird property—Kate's money, Lulu's, Aunt Sarah's, Carrie's—was lost. The prospect had been salted. Mr. Donner had lost everything, had tried to kill himself, but his trembling hand sent the bullet into his shoulder. He had failed in that, too.
No one reproached Joe to Kate, but she was quiveringly sensitive to what they must be feeling, although they were all so kind. Carrie was always at the house, trying to help, sending off notes in the wrong envelopes, making so much trouble by trying not to make any. Lulu was in bed, not able to come herself, but she wrote Kate a long letter on both sides of transparent paper. Kate couldn't make out much of it, but the few words she could read were words of love and sympathy. Even Aunt Sarah made no complaint to her,
