"It was the fight we had with the Tenasas that decided us. That was a
year of great scarcity and the Tenasas took to sending their young men,
two or three at a time, creeping into our hunting-grounds to start the
game, and turn it in the direction of their own country. When our young
men were sure of this, they went in force and killed inside the borders
of the Tenasas. They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two Kettle
Licks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them.
Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost in
the fight at Red Buttes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little.
This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela had
said, 'Once I had a quiver full.' Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back on
her shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with him
into the Council.

"'The quiver is empty,' she said; 'the food bags, also; will you wait
for us to fill one again before you fill the other?'

"Mad Wolf, who was chief at the time, threw up his hand as a man does
when he is down and craves a mercy he is too proud to ask for. 'We have
fought the Tenasas,' he said; 'shall we fight our women also?'

"Waits-by-the-Fire did not wait after that for long speeches in the
Council. She gathered her company quickly, seven women well seasoned and
not comely,--'The God of the Corn is a woman god,' she said, sharp
smiling,--and seven men, keen and hard runners. The rest she appointed
to meet her at Painted Rock ten moons from their going."

"So long as that!" said Dorcas Jane. "Was it so far from where you lived
to Mex--to the Country of Stone Houses?"