and the Bat boasted to his chum: "When I come to the enemy, I shall go
nearer than any other Red Lodge man. I shall have more scalps to dance
and no bullet or arrow can stop the Bat when he strikes his pony with
the whip." Red Arrow believed this as much as the boaster did, for men
must believe they will do these things before they do them. "Red Arrow,
we will not go with a big war-party. We will go with Iron Horn's band of
twenty warriors. Then next winter at the warriors' feasts when we tell
what we did, we will count for something. Red Arrow, we will see for the
first time the great war-medicine."

The boys of the camp herded the ponies where the grass was strongest,
and the warriors watched them grow. It was the policy of the tribe to
hang together in a mass, against the coming of the enemy, for the better
protection of the women and the little ones, but no chiefs or councils
were strong enough to stop the yearning of the young Cheyennes for
military glory. All self-esteem, all applause, all power and greatness,
came only down that fearful road--the war trail. Despite the pleadings
of tribal policy Iron Horn, a noted war- and mystery-man, secretly
organized his twenty men for glorious death or splendid triumph. Their
orders went forth in whispers. "By the full of the moon at the place
where the Drowned Buffalo water tumbled over the rocks one day's
pony-travel to the west."

Not even Seet-se-be-a knew why the Bat was not sitting back against his
willow-mat in the gray morning when she got up to make the kettle boil,
but she had a woman's instinct which made her raise the flap to look
out. The two war-ponies were gone. Glancing again behind the robes of
his bed she saw, too, that the oiled rifle was missing. Quickly she ran
to the lodge of Red Arrow's father, wailing, "My man has gone, my man
has gone--his fast ponies are gone--his gun is gone," and all the dogs