And one night the weapons were finished. All that night the people heard the voice of Rain Walker singing. They said: “Those are the songs of one who wishes to go on the warpath!”
And in the morning Rain Walker came out of his lodge. The squaws trembled to see him; and the men wondered. For he had wept and his eyes were pale. Well did the men know that he who weeps in hate is not a child.
And Rain Walker raised a hoarse voice into the morning stillness before all the people: “Where is my woman—she who cooked for me and made my lodge pleasant? Tell me; for I walk there that the crows may eat me!”
The people shivered as though his voice were the breath of the first frost.
“You need not make words, my kinsmen; I know. I walk there and the crows shall eat me.”
He went forth from the door of his lodge and came to the place where the head chief lived among the Hungas. He raised the door flap. “A-ho!” said he, for the chief was within eating. “I, Rain Walker, stand before you. I have words to give.”
“Speak,” said the chief.
“I am wronged. I wish war! I wish to see the Poncas destroyed!”
The head chief gazed long into the tear-washed eyes of Rain Walker, and he said: “It is a big thing to take that trail. It means the wailing of women; it means hunger; it means the crying of zhinga zhingas for fathers that lie in lonesome places and never ride back. It is a hard path to take. I will think.”