VII
THE SINGER OF THE ACHE
The Old Omaha Speaks
NOW this is the story of one who walked not with his people, but with a dream.
To you I tell it, O White Brother, yet is it not for you, unless you also have followed the long trail of hunger and thirst—the trail that leads to no lodge upon the high places or the low places, by flowing streams or where the sand wastes lie.
It shall be as the talking of a strange tribe to you, unless you also have peered down the endless trail, with eyes that ached and dried up as dust, and felt your pony growing leaner and shadow-thin beneath you as you rode, until at last you sat upon a quiet heap of bones and peered and peered ahead.
Moon-Walker was he called—he who walked for the moon. But that was after he had called his pony from the grazing places and mounted for the long ride. Yet was there a time when he ran about among the lodges laughing very merrily with many boys and girls, who played with hoop and spear, made little bloodless wars upon unseen peoples, and played in little ways the big, sad games of men. And then he was called by many names, and all of the names, though different, meant that he was happy.
But once his mother and his father saw how that a man began to look out of his eyes, began to hear a man talking in his throat; and so they said: “It is the time for him to dream.”