Pawnees had been friends many years, and
they had together killed the Sioux in four
famous battles on the Platte. Yet -- who
knows? There was pestilence in the air,
and it had somehow got into men's souls as
well as their bodies.

So, at least, Father de Smet said. He
alone did not despair. He alone tried
neither charm nor curse. He dressed him
an altar in the wilderness, and he prayed at
it -- but not for impossible things. When
in a day's journey you come across two
lodges of Indians, sixty souls in each, lying
dead and distorted from the plague in their
desolate tepees, you do not pray, if you are
a man like Father de Smet. You go on to
the next lodge where the living yet are, and
teach them how to avoid death.

Besides, when you are young, it is much
easier to act than to pray. When the chil-
dren cried for food, Father de Smet took
down the rifle from the wall and went out
with it, coming back only when he could
feed the hungry. There were places where
the prairie was black with buffalo, and the
shy deer showed their delicate heads among
the leafless willows of the Papillion. When
they -- the children -- were cold, this young