It was not long after this that there would be heavy white frost on the trees and the grass in the early morning, and thin ice along the edge of the river in the still places. Little by little this ice thickened and crept out from the shore, so that White Wolf had to break it when he carried Sinopah with him for the daily bath. When the two of them plunged into the cold water they shivered and cried, "Ah-ha-ha-ha-ah!" and shrank from the feel of it; but oh, how good they felt, when back in the warm lodge. And then one morning when they went to the river, they found it frozen clear across, the ice so thick that White Wolf had to get a heavy piece of drift and break a hole in it for a bathing-place.
"Oh, hurry! hurry!" Sinopah cried. "I want to get back to the lodge and put on my clothes, and come out here to play."
But his mother would not let him start out until he had eaten all of the fat meat on a roasted buffalo rib. Then, taking up his top and the whipper for it, away he ran to the river where nearly all the children of the camp were playing on the ice, nearly all of them spinning tops.
Sinopah had a fine top that his grandfather made for him from the tip of a buffalo bull horn. It was about three inches long, an inch or more in diameter, flat on the upper end, and dull-pointed. There was no string for it, as the spinning was done with a whip. This was a slender stick about two feet long, to an end of which were tied three or four fine buckskin strings about a foot and a half in length. The top was started spinning on the ice with the thumb and middle finger of the left hand, and then lashed frequently with the whip to keep it spinning. A favorite play was for three or four children to start their tops at the same time, each one trying to make his top spin the longest.
As usual Lone Bull and the little girl Otaki, Sinopah's best friends, were with him this morning and the three spun their tops together, sometimes one and sometimes another of them winning the long-time game. Sinopah won most of the games, though, and he began to think that he could spin tops as well as any one of the great crowd of children there on the ice. When he had won three games, one after another, from Lone Bull and Otaki, he was sure that he was the best player of all, and said so.
Crow Foot, a boy older by some years, heard the boast and cried out: "You say that you are the best spinner here? Well, I say that I am the best. Come on, and we will see whose words are true. We will start spinning our tops at the same time, and the one of us who spins his longest shall win the other's top."
"Don't you do it, Sinopah," said Lone Bull. "He is bigger than you; he has spun tops two or three winters before we commenced; he will surely win your top."
"Yes, and such a nice top it is, and his only an old wooden one," said Otaki. "Don't play with him."