So it was that he saw the bushes trembling and shaking a little way upstream from where he and the children sat, and he knew that this was not caused by the wind. He sat very still and watched. He wondered what it could be that was coming toward them.
Presently he saw a small, black-eyed face peering through the leafy branches at the edge of the thicket. Then another, and another, and he knew one of them, the face of Weasel Tail, a boy who lived at the upper end of the big camp. "Ah-ha! he is the leader of the boys up there," he thought, "and has come to raid my children here."
But he said nothing, and watched and waited. And then, suddenly, with loud cries, little Weasel Tail sprang out of the brush, leading a dozen other whooping youngsters, and the whole band came skurrying down the shore and fell upon the little group of clay image-makers.
Then what fierce excitement and struggling and wrestling took place for possession of the toys. The little girls, of course, shrieked, and cried, and ran homeward for protection. But the boys of both parties just struggled with one another. Sinopah was tackled by an upper camp boy of about his own age, and over and over they rolled on the gravel almost into the water. Then the boy quickly sprang up, seized all the images he could, and ran away whence he had come, all the others of the band going too and carrying away nearly all the images that had been made.
Through it all, old Red Crane had sat quietly laughing, and letting the struggle go which way it would.
Now that it was all over, Sinopah ran over to him and asked: "Grandfather, why did you let those upper camp boys take our animals?"
"Because they earned them," the old man replied. "That was the game. It was war. Those boys were your enemies and they conquered. It is now your turn. You must go and raid them. No, not to-day. You all must send scouts to watch their play, and sometime you will have a good chance to get as good as they took from here."