"Now, Far Thunder, just you quit that worrying, for everything is going to come out right for us. I know it! I just know that the gods are with us," said my almost-mother.
I could think of nothing to say. As I nodded to Pitamakan and we went out to drive the horses to their night-grazing I wished that I were not so tongue-tied.
"What was he saying?" Pitamakan asked me. I told him, and back to the lodge he went, thrust his head inside the doorway and said: "Far Thunder, you have overlooked our main helper. That loud-mouthed gun of ours can defeat the cut-throats and all their brother tribes, too."
"Maybe so, if they give us time to point and fire it at them," my uncle answered; and my almost-brother came back to me lightly humming his favorite war song.
A cloudy sky made the night very dark. We mounted and drove the loose stock straight west out of the valley, then went southwest for a couple of miles and hobbled them. We picketed Is-spai-u and my runner, which Pitamakan had saddled that evening. We then drew back outside of the sweep of the long ropes, and were about to spread our buffalo robe and lie down when we heard the whir of a rattlesnake close in front of us and another at our right. "Ha! This is worse than facing a war party!" Pitamakan exclaimed. At the sound of his voice the snakes rattled again, and a third somewhere close on our left answered them. We were afraid to move lest we step upon one of the rattlers and get a jab in our moccasined feet from its poisonous fangs.
"We must get back upon our horses and move on," I said.
"Well, you have matches. Begin lighting them and we will do that," said Pitamakan.
I felt in the pocket of my buckskin shirt where I usually carried a few matches wrapped in paper and waterproof bladder skin. The pocket was empty. I felt in my ball pouch and in my trousers pockets, although I knew it was useless to do so, and Pitamakan groaned, "You have lost them?"
"Yes!"
"We just have to pray the gods to guide us," he said.