"But what does my time amount to?" Red Crane asked. "I am old, old. I tell you it makes me sick when I see the younger men start out to hunt, or leave to make war against the enemy, and I can't go with them. All I can do now is to stay here in the camp. All I can do is to teach our little Sinopah; teach him to shoot and hunt; teach him to be good and kind and brave. My time is all for him. So it is that he shall have a fine little bow of horn."
"Father, don't you worry about these things," said White Wolf. "I can hunt for us all, and I can go to war. All I ask of you is to be happy. It is great work that you are doing for our little Sinopah. We are all glad that you do so much for him."
The next morning the old man went up in the hills with Sinopah to get some buffalo horns. They soon found the heads of some freshly killed animals, and took the horns from three of them, all big, shiny black horns of three- and four-year-old bulls. Back they went then to the valley and threw the horns into a hot spring, where they were to remain a couple of days and get soft.
On the third day old Red Crane took the horns out of the spring and found them so soft that they could be split with a knife as easily as if they were just soft wood. So he took them home to the lodge and began making a bow, Sinopah watching every part of the work, and asking many questions about it, so that he could some day make such bows forhimself.
First, the old man cut the horns into long splints of different size, the larger ones an inch wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. The larger pieces were for the middle of the bow, the smaller ones for the ends, and all were neatly shaved, so as to lap closely one on the other,—to splice, as such work is called; all the pieces being stuck together with a very strong waterproof glue made by boiling down the hoofs of the buffalo. When this was done, the old man scraped the bow with sandstone, and then a knife, until from end to end it was as smooth as glass, and of the right shape, heavy and thick in the middle, and from there tapering each way out to the tips. Lastly, to make the bow all the stronger, and springy, he glued strips of sinew to its whole outer length, and wrapped it with sinew bands about four inches apart. When finished, the bow was about three feet long.
The next thing was to string the bow with a fine cord of twisted sinew, and then the arrows were made, the shafts of straight, hard, heavy greasewood, the points of thin iron bought from the traders, and the feathering of quills of wild-goose wings.
The old man made eleven of these iron-pointed arrows, and then went to work on another shaft with which he took especial pains, working a whole evening in just scraping and polishing it, and soaking it full of grease. Sinopah, watching him, grew restless, and asked why he worked so long on just one arrow shaft.
"Because this is to be a medicine arrow; a lucky arrow," Red Crane replied.
He then took from his own quiver an arrow that had a very small, thin, sharp point of black obsidian, or natural glass. In the Yellowstone country there is a whole mountain of such stuff.
"Now, I am going to take this point off and fasten it on this shaft," said the old man, "and you are never to use it except when in danger. My father made the point for me, and three different times it has saved my life. By that you can see it is great medicine."