lodge.

Days of listless longing followed the journey to the Inyan-kara in
search of the offices of the Good God, and the worn body and fevered
mind of White Otter recovered their normal placidity. The red warrior on
his resting-mat sinks in a torpor which a sunning mud-turtle on
a log only hopes to attain, but he stores up energy, which must sooner
or later find expression in the most extended physical effort.

Thus during the days did White Otter eat and sleep, or lie under the
cottonwoods by the creek with his chum, the boy Red Arrow--lying
together on the same robe and dreaming as boys will, and talking also,
as is the wont of youth, about the things which make a man. They both
had their medicine--they were good hunters, whom the camp soldiers
allowed to accompany the parties in the buffalo-surround. They both had
a few ponies, which they had stolen from the Absaroke hunters the
preceding autumn, and which had given them a certain boyish
distinction in the camp. But their eager minds yearned for the time to
come when they should do the deed which would allow them to pass from
the boy to the warrior stage, before which the Indian is in embryo.

Betaking themselves oft to deserted places, they each consulted his own
medicine. White Otter had skinned and dried and tanned the skin of the
little brown bat, and covered it with gaudy porcupine decorations. This
he had tied to his carefully cultivated scalp-lock, where it switched in
the passing breeze. People in the camp were beginning to say "the little
brown bat boy" as he passed them by.

But their medicine conformed to their wishes, as an Indian's medicine
mostly has to do, so that they were promised success in their