Then the flames closed in, the smoke hid the peaked hill, and frantically the people fled from their village to a nearby creek, where they huddled in the stream, and where the loud flame passed over them, booming on into the north.
When the gray of morning fell upon the blackened prairie, the people returned to their village. But at the opening in the circle of lodges stood a mounted man. Both he and his pony were blackened as with fire. It was Little Weasel.
As his people drew near he raised a wheezing voice and said: “Behold Little Weasel, whom the fire-spirits love! All day I rode across the hills, thinking of my people’s unkindness. In the evening a great fire grew up about me. It was not a common fire; it was a medicine fire. It grew up about me and my pony, and lifted us like the waters of a flood. And I was frightened till I heard a voice that thundered, and it said: ‘Little Weasel has been punished by a foolish people. The spirits of fire will take him back and his people will take him in again.’ And lo! here I am, Little Weasel. I want my eagle feather.”
And the people, believing many strange things, took him in with a great feasting.
And from that day they called him by another name—Paeda-Nu, the Fire-Man.
And he was great among his people.
IV
THE SCARS