With a sudden hoarse cry the father plunged down the hill and fell above the body of his son.
When the white men came to him they perceived that the bodies of the boys lay in the dark stain of their own blood as in a blanket. They were dead, slain by their own hands.
Then old Hozro rose and said, “White man, this is your work. Go back to your home. Is not your thirst slaked? Drink up the blood of my son and go back to the white wolves who sent you. Leave us with our dead!”
In silence, with faces ashamed and heads hanging, the war chief and stern old white man rode back to their camp, leaving the heroic father and grandsire alone in the desert.
That night the great mesa was a hill of song, a place of lamentation. Hozro and Supela were like men stunned by a sudden blow. The old grandsire wept till his cry became a moan, but Hozro, as the greatness of his loss came to him, grew violent.
Mounting his horse, he rode fiercely up and down the streets. “Now, will you fight, cowards, prairie dogs? Send word to all the villages—assemble our warriors—no more talk now; let us battle!”
But when the morning came, behold the tents of the white soldiers were taken down, and when the elders went forth to parley, the soldier chief said:
“You need not send your children away. If they come down here to the Iron House that is enough. I am a just man; I will not fight you to take your children away. I go to see the Great Father and to plead against this man and his ways.”
“And so our sons died not in vain,” said Supela to Hozro, as they met on the mesa top.
“Aye, but they are dead!” said Hozro, fiercely. “The going of the white man will not bring them back.”