"On the evening of the day that we made peace, he invited me to dance with him and his friends, and I had a pleasant time. A day or two after that I asked him to one of our dances. Then we visited often in his lodge and in mine, and we became close friends. One day he said to me, in signs, of course, the Crows are fine sign talkers, 'We are five young men going south on a raid; you get together four of your friends and join us.'
"Two or three days after that we started, five Crows and five of us, Little Wolf and I joint leaders of the party. We went on foot, traveling at night, taking our time; we had the whole summer before us. We followed up the Bighorn almost to its head, then crossed a wide, high ridge and struck a stream heading in several mountain canyons, and running east into the great plain. At the mouth of one of the canyons we discovered a big camp of the enemy. We came upon it unexpectedly, soon after daylight, and after crossing a wide, level stretch of plain. Looking down from the edge of the cliff we had come to, there was the camp right under us. People were already up and moving about, some of the men preparing to ride out to hunt. We dared not attempt to go back across the plain; there was but one thing for us to do; we wriggled down into a patch of cherry brush just below the top of the cliff and in a coulee that broke it, and felt safe enough except for the fact that the brush was heavy with ripe fruit; some women and children might come up to gather it.
"The cliff was broken down in many places, more a steep slope of boulders than a cliff, and it was not high. From where we sat in the brush the nearest lodges of the camp were no more than long bow shot from us. We could see the people plainly and hear them talking. They were the Spotted Horses People.[1]
[1] Kish-tsi-pim-i-tup-i. Spotted Horses People. The Cheyennes.
"The lodge nearest us was very large, new, and evidently the lodge of a medicine man, for it was painted with figures of two long snakes with plumes on their heads. A number of women lived in it; they kept coming out and going back, but their man never once appeared.
"The horses of the camp were grazing in the valley of the stream both above and below it and we looked at them with longing, for we could see that many of them were of the spotted breed. After a time a boy on a big, dancing, spotted stallion drove a large band of horses up in front of the snake medicine lodge and then the medicine man came out to look at them. He was a very tall and heavily built man. He wore a cow leather wrap, medicine painted. My Crow friend nudged me, pointed to the big stallion and then signed to me: 'I shall take that horse to-night, and others with him!'
"I laughed, and signed back, 'You don't know that for sure. I may be the one to seize him!'
"The medicine man was talking to the boy on the stallion, louder and louder until his voice became like the roar of a wounded bear in our ears. He suddenly reached up and seized the boy by the arm, dragged him from the stallion, and then picking up a big stick began to beat him with it. We groaned at the awful sight; almost we cried out at it, we who never strike our sons. The women had come out of the lodge; they were crying, no doubt begging the man to let the boy go, but he paid no attention to them, nor to the crowd of people hurrying toward him from all parts of the camp. He beat and beat the boy, at last struck him on the head and he fell as though dead; and at that the women ran forward and lifted him and hurried him into a near-by lodge. The man watched them go, then took up his fallen wrap and went into his lodge. Said my Crow friend to me, in signs, 'We must make that man pay big for beating the boy. He shall lose his horses, all of them, and his medicine, too!'
"'Yes! Let us, you and I, take all his horses, and our men take others as they will. But his medicine, no, not that; it would bring us bad luck,' I answered.