The next morning, when Carl got up, he went to the door and looked out. The circle was there, larger than it was before, and some of the braves seemed to be pretty nearly exhausted. He noticed that there was not so much bounding into the air as he had observed the day before, the young braves who had indulged in that practice having got weary and given the dance up to somebody else.
“It is the same old dance,” said Carl, going outside and seating himself on his favorite hillock. “The old men are in there yet, but the young ones have gone out. What a dust they raise! It is no wonder that the squawman called it the ‘dragging dance.’”
He was getting tired of the Ghost Dance. He had nothing to do but sit there and look on. He thought that if some of the officers at the fort could have seen it they would not be so anxious to stop it, for the thing would die out of itself as soon as cold weather came. But then an Indian was long-winded. If his medicine man had told him that the dance was to be continued for ten days, he would have found some way to get through with it. He heard a rustling in the tepee, and the squawman came out and stood beside him.
“Have you got a pair of moccasins that you can let me have?” asked Carl, remembering that he needed one thing more to complete his disguise. “This boot hurts my foot so that I can scarcely step on it.”
“I reckon,” said Harding, who turned about and went into the tepee again. He fumbled around there for awhile, and then came out with a pair of moccasins in his hand which he threw down beside Carl. “There is some foot-gear which my old woman made for herself to go into the Ghost Dance with. You may find them pretty large, but if you strap them up tight around the ankles I guess they will stay on. What do you think of the Ghost Dance?”
“Is that all there is to it?” asked Carl in reply.
“Why of course it is,” said the squawman in surprise. “I think that if you kept up that motion for five days you would think there was something to it.”
“Do you want that I should tell you the truth?”
“Of course. I don’t want you to lie to me.”
“Well, I think it is the biggest fake that ever a party of men indulged in,” said Carl, who did not expect that the squawman would take kindly to this criticism.