barked and ran about in the shadows while Red Arrow's mother appeared in
the hole in the tepee, also wailing, "My boy has gone, my boy has gone,"
and the village woke up in a tumult. Everyone understood. The dogs
barked, the women wailed, the children cried, the magpies fluttered
overhead while the wolves answered back in piercing yells from the
plains beyond.

Big Hair sat up and filled his pipe. He placed his medicine-bag on the
pole before him and blew smoke to the four sides of the earth and to the
top of the lodge saying: "Make my boy strong. Make his heart brave, O
Good Gods--take his pony over the dog-holes--make him see the enemy
first!" Again he blew the smoke to the deities and continued to pray
thus for an hour until the sun-lit camp was quiet and the chiefs sat
under a giant cotton-wood, devising new plans to keep the young men at
home.

Meanwhile from many points the destined warriors loped over the rolling
landscape to the rendezvous. Tirelessly all day long they rose and fell
as the ponies ate up the distance to the Drowned Buffalo, stopping only
at the creeks to water the horses. By twos and threes they met,
galloping together--speaking not. The moon rose big and red over their
backs, the wolves stopped howling and scurried to one side--the
ceaseless thud of the falling hoofs continued monotonously, broken only
by the crack of a lash across a horse's flank.

At midnight the faithful twenty men were still seated in a row around
Iron Horn while the horses, too tired to eat, hung their heads. The old
chief dismissed his war-party saying: "To-morrow we will make the
mystery--we will find out whether the Good Gods will go with us to war
or let us go alone."